Saying Goodbye to Vine

Fifteen minutes of fame is all a person needs to reach instant popularity, but in the 21st century all it takes is six seconds. Or, at least it used to take six seconds.

Vine, a social media app owned by Twitter, is shutting down, and and taking my of my adolescent memories with it.

When I first heard this news, I passed it off as another tech rumor that would never actually happen. Little did I know, the app that I have spent hours upon hours on would soon disappear right before my eyes.

Vine was one of the first social media platforms I signed up for, and it exposed me to another side of the internet. A side where no one cared what you did or what you said, as long as it was funny.

Since the sixth grade, Vine has always been a dependable source of laughter to me. Short, six second loops of talking dogs or epic fails would take up all of my freetime, and I would happily revine anything that brought even the slightest smile to my face. To this day, I owe a part of my sleep deprivation and homework procrastination to Vine.

Vine is preferred over other social media platforms because you don’t have to have a certain “star quality” to become Vine famous. Even one of my friends is famous on Vine, with over 50,000 loops, all because she captured her little sister doing a back-handsprings into a tree in her backyard.

I used to watch Vine any chance I could get – on the prealgebra bus ride before school, waiting in line at Chipotle. You name a time and Vine was most likely draining the battery of my iPhone 4s.

Vine might just seem like another useless social media app to the outside world, but for me it’s the foundation behind infinite hours of distraction and laughter. Even as I’m writing this I’m getting sidetracked by my old revines.

Vine shutting down might seem like an unimportant issue in comparison to the current presidential election and civil wars, but I can assure you that this will still affect many people.

Many now famous people got their start on Vine. Some short videos have even gone as far as to develop franchises. One all-boy group called “Magcon” is estimated at several million dollars. Boys from this group have branched outside of their original Vine roots and have started their own singing and acting careers, who will now have to transfer over to other social media platforms, such as YouTube and Musical.ly.

While I understand that it costs more to keep Vine up and running than Vine actually makes in profits, Vine is still relevant. Almost everyday I walk into room 521 and overhear editors and staffers alike conversing over their favorite vines.

Sure, a majority of the most popular apps only stay for a little bit, but I wish Vine didn’t have to go so soon. For now, I will be watching my favorites on repeat until they are gone.