By Kristen Santer 

Last week, Twitter announced it will shut down Vine’s mobile app in the next few months. Vine is a social media site purely dedicated to user videos of six seconds or less launched in 2012. Existing Vines will not be deleted, but it is clear that the service will likely be discontinued altogether.

Although it never achieved the same popularity as Instagram, Vine inspired countless memes that are still referenced today. The skill and imagination used in creating these interesting and funny six second videos was astonishing. I would spend hours on Vine watching these videos, and unlike some other social media websites, I always felt better after my time on it.

Vine was one of the last social media sites that had yet to succumb to advertisements and trolling (although to be completely free of that is impossible). Twitter has become overrun with journalists and direct insults. Facebook is now overflowing with millennials who recently became moms — ergo, plenty of baby and wedding pictures to make you feel good about yourself. Instagram exists so attractive people can make money off of their beauty. Vine was one of the only social media platforms where inventiveness and creativity still lingered in the Internet age.

For people who are starting to despise politically correct culture, Vine completely embraced the opposite. Different cultures, races and ethnicities made fun of themselves and others, pointing out the inherent humor can result from misunderstandings and awkwardness. Popular Viner Eric Dunn created one of my favorite Vines, which depicts him explaining why he loves to walk in white neighborhoods. In the Vine, he runs with his shirt off screaming, “Ha ha ha, I’m going to steal all your stuff!”

The site had a relatively large community built around it, although some might call it a “niche” group in the grand scheme of the internet. One of the greatest aspects of this community was its ability to give voices to underrepresented groups in comedy. such as Toronto-based Viner Jus Reign, who posted about South Asian culture and made it mainstream. Some of his best Vines ranged from turban jokes to more absurdist humor.

A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 31 percent Vine users identified as black and 24 percent identified as Hispanic. Vine had a vibrant community of black comedians who gave life to the most hysterical and creative videos on the website. Popular Viners such as Jay Versace and DeStorm Power greatly influenced and shaped the website and culture, and the “Why you always lying?” Vine by Nick Fraser is now iconic.

A writer for the New York Times, Jazmine Hughes, deftly explored the importance and popularity behind Vines for black Americans: “Versace’s Vines are a particular product of black culture — on the surface, they’re funny to anyone lucky enough to bear witness, but there’s a secondary layer that’s meant for black people, predicated on our shared culture, experiences and understandings.”
These videos were important parts of the minority culture, society at large. It is devastating to have these voices silenced. Everyone please bow your heads and remain silent for 6.5 seconds sometime this week to commemorate the loss of such an important and ingenious site, and prepare yourself for the death of “do it for the Vine.”

Kristen Santer, FCRH ’17, is a communication and media studies major from Stamford, Connecticut.