October 27, 2016

It was kind of short, that thing of making a thing out of shortness.

Twitter acquired Vine in 2013, and now they're packing it in. Twitter lives on, struggling, making a go of 140 characters, but Vine, those loops of 6 seconds, is done.

It was sweet for a time.
To skeptics who sweated our ever-eradicating attention spans—and to creators who were accustomed to telling stories over the course of minutes and hours, not mere seconds—Vine must initially have seemed like a low-brow Beelzebub, a goofy lark for people who wanted instant, swiftly forgettable gratification. But what users and viewers soon discovered was that, by isolating and repeating small moments, Vines could be kind of brilliant: They could amplify a joke, heighten a weird moment’s dream-like goofiness, and make the banal seem beautiful—sometimes all at once.
Like this:



And this:



That's all. It's over. It was always almost over. And now it's really truly over. You're free, at long last, at short first.

14 comments:

Rob said...

Short is good.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

...our ever-eradicating attention spans...

Exactly what are our attention spans eradicating?

Michael K said...

Isn't it amusing that these new cool organizations keep alienating 50% of the population and then wonder what happened ?

The NFL is puzzled by viewer drop off.

Gospace said...

I've never been to Vine. Nor twitter. My 17 year old has wasted hours of time on Vine, as have his friends. So I've seen some Vine videos he's found particularly funny. And all of his friends are on Twitter. All of his friend's parents are on facebook. As am I. He is also, because we had him sign up so he could keep track of his cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings, who are all on it. Along with his one surviving grandparent.

Achilles said...

It really isn't a secret why twitter is dying and everything associated with it turns to shit. If you crap on half of your customers and you lose the intelligent and tolerant part of the other half because they dislike fascism you are just left with a bunch of shithead whiners and bullies for customers.

Twitter will be dead in not very long. Nobody likes fascists.

MayBee said...

I wonder if they meant "ever-eroding".

tim maguire said...

I've seen a small number of great things, but it's too hard to turn off once turned on. The video where Alan Baldwin (Alan?) catches the ball--I had to reload the whole page to get it to stop. Shovels Like Teen Spirit, however, was a few seconds of brilliance.

Curious George said...

"tim maguire said...
The video where Alan Baldwin (Alan?) catches the ball--"

Alec.

Curious George said...

Smells Like Teen Shovel...genius.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I'm glad there was time enough for Leonard Nimoy.

Tank said...

Is that Baldwin's daughter?

Curious George said...

"Tank said...
Is that Baldwin's daughter?"

Wife.

CJinPA said...

Moments of creativity like Smells Like Teen Shovel make up for the lurid moments of the internet. There are a lot of creative people in the world. And the oddball because-I-can creations are the most enjoyable.

CJinPA said...

Curious George said...
"tim maguire said...
The video where Alan Baldwin (Alan?) catches the ball--"

Alec.


Oh, there's bound to be a Baldwin brother named Alan.