I've always been very tentative with my use of social media. I have a Facebook that I frequent fairly often, a Tumblr page that I frequent way too often, and a Twitter account that I barely look at. My YouTube account is strictly for watching videos, not making them. My creativity doesn't extend that far into video making, so I stick with writing.
Vine was something I never, ever used. I didn't even have an account. I heard about it from friends, the occasional annoying person who would pop by and scream "DO IT FOR THE VINE," and on one occasion, a guy I knew actually told me at a party that he was there hoping to make some Vines. At that point, all I knew about Vine was basically what those annoying people would scream: "Do it for the Vine!" Which in my head read, "Do something stupid in six seconds or less so everyone else can see how stupid you are!" Congratulations, you made a Vine!
I was never really well acquainted with Vines until I hit college and started spending way too much time on Tumblr. A lot of Viners share their Vines on Tumblr specifically, because Tumblr has a function that makes them easy to watch and loop. It was there that I started to see the appeal — people, like Thomas Sanders (thatsthat24) and Jake Holland (dashbeardconfessional,) made Vines on their main Vine accounts and put them up on Tumblr. As a follower of both, I started to realize how amazing Vine actually could be.
The thing about Vine is that it forces creativity in a very different way than one would expect. A Vine is typically six seconds long, not a lot of time to be creative, which is probably why so many people started off in Vine with doing six second loops of people doing strange or painful things. Thomas Sanders took Vine to a whole new level for me with his mini series "Storytime." In it, Thomas would pass by someone, on the street usually, and say a line that sounds like it could come out of a storybook ("There was no girl quite as beautiful as she!" for example) and he would record the reactions people had. All in six seconds. Many of Jake Holland's videos involve him making funny noises in his car to entertain himself, and while funny the first time through, it's amazing how entertaining something can become on loop. Viners who do it right know their craft. They can make something entertaining in six seconds that people will watch over and over again until they're practically crying with laughter.
It was announced this week, though, that Twitter is shutting Vine down. The site will be eventually closed and no longer used. This is, for me, who just got into Vines, massively disappointing. Vine was a fascinating site. Forcing people to find a way to make a whole story in six seconds is incredibly challenging, and the best Viners were the ones who took that challenge by the horns and created something entertaining visually that could be captured in so little time (not to say that the six second cat videos aren't great, because they are.)
So to Vine, I'm sorry to see you go. You were something fresh and exciting and it's interesting to find out how many YouTubers that are popular right now got their start on Vine. I wish we had more time to explore what you had to offer, but unfortunately, Twitter decided to off you. To all the Viners out there, I hope you find another way to express your creativity.
