If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a Vine must be priceless. For those who waste their time on literature or friendship, Vine is a social-media app owned by Twitter. Similar to how tweets are limited to 140 characters, Vines are videos limited to six seconds to craft their message to the world. Vines are also immediately replayed or looped, creating a sort of hypnotic rhythm that makes you want to live in those six seconds forever.
In spite of this time restriction, many entertainers have found fame through the restricting medium. Actor Andrew Bachelor, better known by his Vine username King Bach, is the most popular creator on the website, and is followed by over 15 million people. Other popular Viners include actor Josh Peck and comedian Bo Burnham. Even Ryan Gosling got in on the fun, with the “Ryan Gosling refuses to eat his cereal” series, which was a near-genius concept of the Gosling refusing to eat his cereal. Look it up, I swear it’s fantastic.
Despite this success, Twitter has announced the end of Vine. This means that no new content will be publishable, although older videos will still be viewable.
Public reaction has mostly been indifferent. Vine, despite having 40 million regular users, is dwarfed in comparison to its social media counterparts, such as Snapchat and Instagram, with over 100 and 400 million users, respectively.
Vine also faced a lot of criticism for its failure to manage offensive videos. Many Vines comparing racial disparities often fell flat, delivering offensive racist caricatures.
This reputation for vulgarity, combined with alleged mismanagement, led to the fall of one of the most famous social media apps. In a medium almost entirely consumed by people under the age of 20, the website full of explicit and distasteful jokes was rejected by many children’s guardians.
Another reason for Vine’s demise was its lack of innovation.
As someone who reads all his news on Snapchat and explores the outside world through pics on Instagram, I know how important it is for social media apps to innovate. Annie Hall taught us that relationships are like sharks — they have to keep moving or they die. This is also true of social media, and Vine was the dead shark that had to be removed.
Many people have come to me during this time of Vine crisis, asking what should happen next? I say to these people, let it die on the vine. Vine has been unsuccessful, and I don’t even know anyone who uses it. Snapchat rules.
But to my fellow mourners, I ask: what moral lessons have we learned? We saw the importance of always innovating, building off of old ideas and always looking forward. We saw the importance of taking a stance against hurtful material, something that could have helped with Vine’s reputation and success with its main demographic of children. Finally, and possibly most importantly, we learned Ryan Gosling cannot, does not and will not eat his cereal.