In 2013, the the app Vine was launched and nothing was the same after. Everyone was a comedian and for 6 seconds, everyone had a mass audience.
At first, I hated Vine. I disliked the idea of people who weren't really that funny, to begin with earning thousands of dollars in endorsements. It didn't seem fair to the actual actors and comedians struggling out there.
It didn't take me long to realize that a good portion of the "creators" on Vine was actually struggling comedians or actors.
Or Josh Peck, and let's be real here, would he really have a career if he wasn't on Vine? Still, Vine was full of kids my age doing and saying the stupidest things and earning a following.
As a failed child star (who didn't even really try to be a child star), I was beyond enraged at these idiotic teenage boys brainwashing younger girls into laughing at their dull humor.
But then, a miracle happened. I located the stick that was keeping me from having a good time and pulled it out. I was suddenly super into Vine. I was big into sending and sharing with my friends. I had my favorites and the ones that I hated but would watch out of spite.
From 2015 to 2016, I think I spent more time watching Vines than I did reading a book that wasn't school required. Which sounds bad but it made me cooler and more relatable. For the first time, I wasn't such a big nerd. I was a small nerd who loved the baby covered in peanut butter vine.
I knew that the minute the Viners started branching out into YouTube and furthering their brand by hosting meet-ups and charging up the wazoo for t-shirts that the bird (meaning vine) was going to fly right into the propellers (meaning into a garbage can on fire). Vine announced they were shutting down around this time last year.
I remember going into a photography studio, about to take my headshot for the yearbook when the notification came up on the screen. It was kind of like reading a breakup text if I got those kinds of things. It was truly the end of an era. Everything I had known and entertained myself with was soon going to die right in front of me like it never loved me at all.
After a brief mourning period, I realized that just because the new content had stopped production, it didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy the classics. The peanut butter baby was in several threads and with these threads, I found a new love. That new love was Kermit in the car singing Don't Mind by Usher. That Vine speaks to me in ways Sylvia Path cannot and I can't explain it.
There are not many things that bring people together on Twitter. Vine threads, Vine threads are what kept us together in the trying times of our nation. We saw the classics, the underground wonders, the overexposed, the underexposed, the ones we forget, the ones we wish we could... we truly have it all now that Vine has died and we have it all on twitter. Not only is it the constant threads on our timelines, it's the references to the Vines that are said in daily conversation. Every time someone falls down, all I can think is "Oh! He needs some milk."
