- The Viner invasion.
The onslaught of Viners coming onto YouTube.
- This is kind of just a substance list,
highly edited garbage.
- [David] I'm very proud to be from Vine.
- [Brittany] There's no way to kill the Vine.
The vine just keeps growing.
(upbeat Christmas music)
- So, when Vine shut down there was kind of this exitis
of it's top talent that basically hopped on over
to YouTube and have since become very successful.
I mean, you have the more controversial creators,
like your Paul brothers, Lele Pons,
to very popular creators like David Dobrik, or Liza Koshy.
And all of these people kind of built a large chunk
of their audience off of Vine.
It's also very interesting to me
because I somehow missed the entire Vine craze.
I don't know what I was doing.
I mean, even some of my friends were
prominent Viners themselves.
Including my buddy Jack here, the camera guy.
- Hey, what up? What's going on?
- [Aria] Mmm, I know I didn't like that.
(kiss sounds)
- Kissing to you, Aria.
- I know, man.
- Just kidding. I'm kissing my girlfriend.
- What was vine?
- It's an app where it's just 6 second videos,
you can make whatever you want, and it just loops
over and over.
The downfall of vine was kind of inevitable,
because it was just so limiting to the people
making Vines.
- You had a big following on Vine.
So lets just break down your history on that.
- I had a viral video of my cat attacking me.
(angry cat meow)
and that was kind of when my Vine blew up.
I gained like, 25,000 followers in one day.
Do you wanna build a snowman? (scream)
I was just like lazy, and I didn't keep up
with consistency, and I think that's
what hurt me.
But, I'm okay with it.
(laugh)
Hey, there's some up there.
And you're not subscribed, so.
(bleep) off.
(laughing)
- [Aria] Well what makes this whole topic of Viners
on YouTube even more interesting to me,
is the idea of a Vine invasion.
- We've lost the war against the Viner invasion
and they're definitely here to stay.
- I don't know if anyone else in interested,
but I find it very fascinating just because
you kind of see now YouTube has been around long enough
that we have these different era's.
When you think of all the old phases from back in the day
you know, your Smosh's, your Kevjumba's,
now we're in this phase where so many of the top creators
are these former Viners. And some of them,
not all of them, but some of them have come under criique
and criticism for their content.
- These former Viners don't have a bad reputation
because the internet is just full of haters.
It's because their content is terrible.
- Look, I'm making this hilarious repetitive content
with sexual references that is generally unfunny.
Please accept me?
- So right now we're gonna hop on a call with Leon Lush.
He's a YouTuber based out on the East Coast.
His content critiques and looks at YouTube
and internet culture through a kind of comedic lens.
He will be an interesting additional perspective.
- [Jack] Roll on here.
- Alright.
- Lush, Does he own Lush cosmetics?
- [Aria] Hey Leon!
What is it about Vine content that kind of,
you think separates it?
- I will say the majority of people I think that
came over from Vine are fantastic.
I would say Cody Ko is probably my favorite right now.
You have your Danny Gonzalez, Drew Gooden crushing it
right now.
And they've been able to leave the six second format
and come over and do a longer form style of content,
which is what does well on YouTube.
But there's always gonna be comedy or styles of content
that I and a lot of other people think is stupid,
but still has a large audience.
- I truly cannont fathom why this has 4.8 million views.
- I think this is like the Vine Invasion
we're talking about, where it's just,
it's this different kind of comedy that I feel like
people that are kind of down to earth
and I guess a little more genuine
they watch it and their just like,
uh, this is really really dumb.
- Wow I feel like I lost 10 years of my life
just now watching that terrible comedy.
- I feel like there comes a point
when you watch these videos where your brain
just automatically dies.
- The main kinda culprits of this,
there's a company called Shots Studios,
your Lele Pons, your Hannah Stockings.
- Today we will be looking at the worst
Shots Studios has to offer. So, all of it.
- I understand there's market for it.
Because that whole crew came over from Vine
and is crushing it on YouTube,
because they do highly produced things,
but, it's just, it's like these highly produced turds.
- And then she tells him to get out the closet.
- I think it's about time you get out of the closet, huh?
- What?
- I'm always looking for the punchline.
- You can sort of tell that they like got on set
with a vague idea of what they were going to film.
But they weren't entirely sure.
- It's just like a bunch of like uncoordinated things
put together. You hear a bunch of these, hold on, ready?
(suspenseful drum beat)
Are you familiar with that sound?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, there's about 140 of those sound effects.
It's always like really attractive people,
exploiting how hot they are for a couple of seconds,
and that's pretty much the punchline.
But, when you strip it away,
there's really nothing left.
This is kinda just the substance list,
highly edited garbage.
It just seems like so cold,
like nothing I've ever watched from like any of these people
makes you feel like your getting to see
just like a little glimpse into
who they actually are as a person.
I think what's so great, and what
so many people love about YouTube
is more than Vine offered, like it gives you that connection
with a creator, it gives you a chance to feel like
you're getting to know them a little bit,
and you're getting to see who they really are.
And I think the people that have done so well
in the transition have done that.
Aside from talking about these, the ones we like,
and the ones we don't.
There's probably a ton of Viners that tried
to be YouTubers and just didn't do so well.
I've seen that happen with a lot of different people.
- This guy was on Vine.
- See? That's what I'm saying.
(laughing)
Nice jawline, got the hair all, that's Vine money
right there, baby.
(upbeat Christmas music)
♪ Pretty lights on the trees ♪
♪ I'm watching them shine ♪
- [Aria] To offer an alternate perspective,
we head across town to meet with Brittany Furlan,
who was one of Vines most successful stars,
but who never actually made the full jump onto YouTube.
Brittany Furlan, what do you know about her?
- She was one of the like OG Viners,
she was on the app pretty early.
But I think she was, for a while the most followed
female Viner.
- Did you enjoy her content?
- I- the Vines I liked were different from her Vines.
- Your style of Vine was literally you screaming.
- Yeah (scream)
No, I didn't like my Vines either.
(laughing)
(upbeat violin music)
- [Aria] Oh, Hi there.
Nice to meet you.
- [Aria] Oh, I didn't even notice.
This is Jack, this is Si.
- Hi guys!
- [Jack] Jack
- [Brittany] Nice to meet you.
- [Jack] Nice to meet you too.
- [Brittany] Come on in, guys.
(upbeat music)
- [Brittany] All the top performers when I started
were like, traditional comedians.
Like Adam Goldberg, Will Sasso, Chris D'elia,
Steve Agee, they were indie comedians, you know?
And people were like, oh this apps cool
and like indie.
And I was like, oh cool, I fit in.
Then like Bach, and Logan, and Lele, and Jake Paul,
and all of these like young kids got on
and it just kinda flipped.
- Like the demographic completely shifted?
- Oh yeah, like I was doing prank stuff,
and like hurting myself and stuff like that.
And they Lele came along and then she started doing
like 10 times more than I was doing.
Like really hurting herself, like jumping off bridges.
So, I was like alright, I give up, you can be #1.
Like I was not going that far.
I don't know what happened, it just got really young.
And then I'd have like 7 year olds telling me
to kill myself.
And I was like, whoa, dude.
Cause even reading those words, like for me,
just cause I already have such bad anxiety and depression,
I'm like I don't wanna be around this.
So, eventually I just stopped.
If I would have just like bit the bullet
and been like I'm just gunna go to Youtube, you know,
like Liza, all those people.
I would probably be way more successful.
But I just couldn't, like inside of me
there was something about it,
I just couldn't like force myself to do something
that wasn't really true to who I am.
- Do you feel like they may feel the same way,
but they still did it?
- [Brittany] Yeah, I think some of them probably do.
Yeah, I think a lot of them do.
I mean, I'm not saying they're not like deep people,
you know, I think a lot of them probably
are like, oh gosh this is so lame.
But also like, love the money and love the attention,
and love the lifestyle it provides, you know?
Because their like all loaded now, you know?
They're loaded.
- There is kind of a defined Vine Invasion style of content.
- Oh, yeah. Like the Viners took over.
- What are your thoughts on that content, in general?
- I mean, I don't watch any of it.
Most of the people who watch YouTube regularly
I'm gonna say are like below 20.
- [Aria] And do you believe that kind of is
what's allowing these people, these VineTubers
to still-
- [Brittany] Of course!
Because it's like they're like still laughing
at the same stuff that like a kid would laugh at.
Like someone falling and getting hurt.
Or like, oh, when you run into your crush in public
with your friend but you look like crap, like you know?
Oh boy, you know and they make it funny and it's
like really big.
It's almost like Vaudevillian, they're all just like
(gasping)
you know, the expressions are so big
and everything is so intense.
And like I think like younger people really react to that.
- If they didn't have their following from Vine,
if they were to start making that content today,
do you think they would still have that same success?
- No, I think if there was no Vine
and they didn't have somewhere to like launch off of, no.
(slow percussion beat)
- [Aria] Throughout the day, Jack had been
reaching out to his Vine friends to see
if any of them would speak with me.
And on our way back, he finally gets a response.
- David said he could FaceTime.
You, FaceTime you.
- Like now?
- Yeah, just pull over.
- So I know David Dobrik by name.
But just break it down, who is he?
- He had a lot of success on Vine,
and he has even more success on YouTube.
He hasn't had like tons of controversy,
not a lot of people hate his videos,
he's like just a poster child for transitioning
from Vine to YouTube.
- [David] Hello.
- Hello
- [David] Hi, am I on camera?
- Not yet.
- [David] Let me hop in the car
- Okay.
- [David] Actually, let me pay for my meter.
- Okay.
- Hey, David again my name is Aria.
Thanks for doing this. Are you having a good day?
- I'm have a great day, yeah, what's up?
What are you guys gonna bring my mood down about?
- [Aria] How do you guys know eachother?
- We both lived in Illinois when we were on Vine.
- Jack like helped me start my Vine channel.
- Hey, you're welcome dude.
- I owe Jack millions.
(laughing)
- [Aria] So I kind of wanted to do a deep dive into
how Vine has transitioned over onto YouTube,
and so I just sort of wanted to get your persepctive
on kind of how that transition was for you.
- I didn't make the transition because Vine was dying.
And I think that's why it worked.
Is because, I literally made it just because
I wanted to try it.
What Viners took from Vine, what everybody learned from it,
is that like people like to watch things that are quick
and fast paced.
So when I transitioned I took 100% of the whole
fast paced stuff and just applied it to my videos.
- You mentioned how you took the Vine elements
and you've kind of, you've adapted well enough.
Was there other creators that have tried
to do a similar thing where they take
the Vine elements and just kind of make long form
versions of it, to not quite as positive
of a reception?
- There are people that make stuff just to make money,
and maybe they don't love creating videos.
But at the end of the day, if they're getting views,
there's people behind those views that are
being entertained by them.
And that's maybe not necessarily my cup of tea,
or it's not your audience,
but there are younger kids that are enjoying it,
and there are other people that are enjoying it.
You know, whether the intention is all genuine, or not,
I can't really complain.
If other people are enjoying it then,
I shouldn't be upset about it.
- What people do to build their audience and
entertain people, you know? It's all love man.
I understand it, it's fun to make fun of these people,
but they're just doing them,
and there's a market for that style of comedy.
So, I say more power to ya.
(laughs)
- Think Viners will continue to thrive.
I really do, I don't see them going anywhere.
I just see them getting bigger and bigger.
And infiltrating movies, and TV, and everything.
- [David] In my opinion, in about five, ten years
all those kids that grew up on this,
they're going to have jobs in the real world.
They're going to be the ones that are putting
shows on different platforms.
They're going to be hiring YouTube talent
to do more jobs.
I think YouTube's gonna be a bigger thing
in a couple of years.
- [Brittany] I think it's here to stay.
(laughs)
there's no way to kill the Vine.
The Vine just keeps growing.
- [David] Yeah, I think its that,
I missed the question again, I was just looking
at my brand new shades.
- [Aria] They're very sweet.
Hey, look at our holiday sweaters.
Check out our holiday sweaters, man.
I appreciate David Dobrik taking the time
to speak with me.
Although, I entirely blame him
for my car battery dying during that call.
And now here we are stuck in the middle of the-
- [Jack] Who left the car on idle?
- There's no need to point fingers, Jack.
I think it's not so much Viners, or YouTubers,
but just personalities now at this point.
And it's going to be really interesting to see
just how YouTube, and the internet,
and media as a whole continues to evolve
over not even the course of the next two years,
but even like in the coming months.
Because that's the thing about the internet,
it's a fickle beast.
And I keep talking because I'm hoping that triple A
will finally answer, but, unlikely.
- [Call Operator] Please remain on the line
for the next available agent.
(upbeat Christmas music)