All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Let’s get one thing straight: Vine was always the weird little second cousin of the internet—populated with a hodgepodge of young black and brown users that it never meant to court. After Twitter’s sudden announcement last week that it was shutting down the four-year-old platform, the outpouring of grief from the internet was surprising to many: Vine was generally a closed little ecosystem. Its base was made up of a large number of black and Latino users, and skewed very young (according to Pew, about one in four American teenagers used the site.) It never had the broad popularity of Facebook. It was a strange side project of Twitter, one that lacked a head of product for multiple years and featured a team determined to ignore how users actually found value in the platform. Later, quicker platforms like Snapchat and Instagram stole Vine’s thunder and the initial rush of creativity slowly bled out.
But Vine’s story isn’t one-sided. In four short years, the microvideo hub also launched the careers of Hollywood ascendants like King Bach and Lele Pons, inspired memes and parodies as hilarious as anything on Saturday Night Live, created way too many dance trends, and remixed our concepts of jokes, voice, and language — all in six-second increments.
Vine was a Seinfeld for the internet era: bizarre slices of life amplified to ridiculous conclusions. The most popular Viners came up with sketches and concepts based on banality. Many of those creators were people of color. As Vine flourished, small subgroups started to form: aspiring singers, not-yet-discovered comedians, visual effects artists in training, beatmakers, dancers, producers, chefs, and designers all found homes for their work on Vine. The intense mix of people provided the kind of robust ecosystem only found through diversity. Even as Vine grew in popularity and celebrities discovered the platform, it remained aggressively strange.
From an intellectual property standpoint, Vine would have never survived. Vine fostered a thriving remix culture built off of piracy and pocket-sized innovation, like all the amazing rap soundscapes that can no longer be released. Before taking its platform to the next level, YouTube had to sort through the debris of major copyright claims. The complexity of Vine’s references would have ultimately led to its downfall.
But we are all poorer for the loss of a unique creative outlet.
Vine was a launchpad for many new careers, but the effect was especially strong for people of color. Without Vine, we wouldn’t have discovered the After Effects mastery of people like Chris Ashley. Cam and Darius Benson would have never been on The Amazing Race. We would have never known the definition of “fleek,” nor would we have had such a clear demonstration of how the internet economy was still leaving black creators in the dust in 2016. (Seriously, is anyone paying Peaches Monroee?)
The demise of Vine also reveals a lot about the commercialization of internet culture. Vine creators found themselves left out to dry as other startups hopscotched over Vine’s anemic model and aging platform. Even as they boasted fanbases in the millions on Vine, creators like Allicattt, Darius Benson, King Bach, QPark, Anwar Jibawi, and others began aggressively promoting their Instagram and YouTube videos on the Vine platforms. There were fewer original Vines, and more remakes and reposts. By earlier this year, most of the funniest Viners had decamped for greener pastures, or had started shilling Tide tablets and hoverboards to make rent. The bloom was off the, er, Vine.
And yet, one nagging thought remains: Would Vine have floundered so spectacularly if Vine (and Twitter more broadly) had valued its main creator base?
From its initial promotion, language, and conception, it appeared Vine’s creators wanted it to be something a bit more like a quirky HGTV. When I went to conferences or looked at the internal curation of Vines, they focused on time-lapse home videos or stop motion animations.
For years, even after the rallying cry of “Do It For The Vine” was popularized by an adorable little girl, Vine was still trying to push its platform in a direction that its users weren’t going.
Viewed through the lens of race, Vine’s eventual demise becomes even more disturbing. Even as black creators like King Bach took the cover of New York magazine, Vine’s editors’ section rarely featured the kinds of videos making breakout stars like Bach famous. If African Americans were featured, we were dancing — but not doing much else. Some of the digerati started connecting the dots. As Bridget Todd wrote in her Medium piece,“People of color are the only reason why Vine was good:”
Mark S. Luckie, head of media and journalism at Reddit, put a finer point on the issue:
Would paying attention to black users have saved Vine? Probably not. Vine suffered within a broader backdrop of Twitter’s internal drama and the rapidly changing nature of online video. But if Vine had noticed earlier how the focus of the platform was shifting, how people were extracting value, and how soon its key influencers started departing, this story might have had a different ending. Vine flew key influencers to London and had them hang out with the US Olympic team. But what if, instead of the publicity stunts, the product team had listened to its core users? What if someone had noticed and sounded the alarm when Darius Benson and King Bach and Allicattt started posting less? What if these tremendously talented people had been offered jobs with Vine to improve the product?
Vine’s user base was its greatest asset. The platform was only limited by what its users imagined. Just look at what they created.
Spelling bee jokes? Check.
Gas station pranks? Check.
Turning that gas station prank into a Frozen mod? Check.
Michelle Obama making mom jokes about vegetables? Check.
Other Viners taking those jokes and making a hot remix? Check.
Vine was everyone’s secret bathroom mirror, everyone’s inside-the-car time, everyone’s inner loves and fears all smashed into a catalogue of the day. It was a weird, strange glimpse into what it means to be young at this point in time, to be constantly ready for the camera, to expect to broadcast almost every part of yourself for consumption. Vine was a mirror we looked in to see ourselves. Nothing was too basic for a Vine.
But, as with all good but strange things, its death was only a matter of time. Like most cult classics before the resurgence, Vine was not a financial success story. Thus, the plug was pulled. The Vine team has promised to “work hard to do this the right way,” and says it will keep the creators in mind as it winds down the platform. But who really knows with these things?
Luckily, nothing ever really dies on the internet. It lives on in our minds, informing the next generation of creators. Before fandom was mainstream, some brave souls were mailing their ’ships to each other and eventually publishing them on LiveJournal. My generation still remembers the joy of webrings, AIM chatrooms, GeoCities pages, and pager codes (07734!). If you think that old ugly internet aesthetic is gone, I dare you to look at Tumblr, and particularly the GIF art that has emerged. Right now, there’s a 10-year-old mainlining Snapchat and Musical.ly—mourning the loss of all those amazing Vine remixes—who is going to create the next great platform that no one sees coming. In its own six-second loopy way, Vine made its mark.
So pour one out for Vine. Hit that Super Mario, then roll back into the Schmoney Dance, film that twerk video with a panda, and remember that there are still some spaces where being your weird self is not just encouraged, but required.
May the internet always be as diverse as it is weird. And may we always Do It For The Vine.
