By: Natalie Norman-Kehe
Popularity. It is all about “who you know.” However, in the last decade the way popularity is measured has changed drastically. One person can have many likes on Instagram. Another can have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter.
Then there is Vine.
Six seconds to stardom. That’s all it takes.
Short, six-second Vines, videos that vary from musical to dramatic to comedic, earn their creators fame.
Popularity beyond just “who you know.”
A little over two years ago, Emily Fan, a 16-year-old junior at Hershey High School, went from just a regular girl to one with a massive digital following. She was now “Vine famous.” Fan found herself with 300 thousand followers on an app called Vine, making her known for her comedic styled Vines.
Emily Fan describes a situation in DisneyLand. This was one of her most popular Vines with over 46 thousand likes.
At a young age Fan knew she was funny. “I’ve always loved comedy. I watch a ton of comedy movies and Youtube videos. I’ve just always had a love for it.” Fan would film her own comedy shows along with her friends that she describes as, “not actually funny.”
Taylor Massage, a long time friend of Fan who participated in these shows, said, “for the shows we’d always bring our camcorder everywhere and would do these characters.” According to the two, these characters included a babysitter with a demonic baby and an Amish family.
A little bit later in life, when Fan was 14 during the summer of 2014, she created a Vine account. On the app, Fan goes by the name “not even emily.” According to Fan, she doesn’t really know why she chose that as her username, “I guess just because it sounded cool.”
Fan initially intended to make funny videos just for her friends and herself and only had a couple of followers in the beginning. “Maybe like five,” Fan said, “I wanted to make [Vines] just for myself. I didn’t think anyone was going to see them at all, why not just be stupid on here, it’s not going to matter.”
Vine, an app that allows users to create short, 6-second videos, was started in January of 2013 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann, and Colin Kroll. According to socialnomics.com, “Twitter bought Vine in 2012 and re-launched in January, 2013 as a free iOS app.” Vine allows users to share six-second looping videos in a feed similar to that of Instagram. Those Vines can then be re-vined, commented on, or liked by other users. Vine has over 40 million active users and counting.
Fan didn’t have the intention at all to get a lot of followers, she said, “it just sort of happened.”
Her five followers quickly turned into thousands when Fan uploaded a Vine that attracted a popular “Viner” named Chris. Chris, who according to Fan, had about a million followers at the time, revined one of Fan’s Vines, “and it just started going up from there,” said Fan. Once that happened her followers skyrocketed. As well as followers, Fan started getting more likes and revines, all of which contributed to her growing popularity on the app.
This Vine by Fan has over 1,400,000 loops. She made it on September 1, 2015 about a singer and an angry audience member at a concert.
But Fan’s growing popularity on the app has lead her mother to be a little weary. Fan’s mother has told her to “be careful of what you post” because of the magnitude of followers that she has.
“I’m fine with it as long as [her Vines] are appropriate,” Fan’s mom said, “It’s nice that Emily can make people laugh, but with technology sometimes it can be unsafe.”
Although Fan claims her parents don’t actually understand how many people see her Vines, they do know how many followers she has. According to Fan, they started to realize how many people actually know her from Vine when people would start coming up to and tell her that she’s funny and that she has had an effect on her.
Even though Fan’s relationship has not changed with her family because of her following, she definitely has seen changes in her relationship with classmates at school. Fan recalled an incident that happened when she was in line at the school’s vending machine where the girl that was in line before Fan told her to go ahead of everybody because she was “famous.” Fan said she was uncomfortable in this situation because the girl was there before Fan and deserved to go first.
Her relationship with her friends also hasn’t changed much, but from her friends’ perspectives, seeing Fan gaining popularity has filled them with mixed emotions. Sarah Snavely, a student at HHS, has been a friend of Fan’s since the second grade. seeing one of her best friends gain so much popularity Snavely said is, “weird to think about, but it’s also really cool. Especially when we go places and people recognize her from Vine.”
Massage also thinks sometimes it can be a little weird but yet cool seeing her friend on the app. Massage said, “It’s weird sometimes because she lives right down the street from me and it’s like ‘whoa she’s making a Vine right now,’ but it’s also hilarious because we’ve been friends for a really long time and seeing her with so many followers and being very popular on a social media site is cool.”
But being a prominent Asian female on social media has lead to a big responsibility for the 16 year old. Fan receives lots of messages from her fans on Twitter and Tumblr that say, “we’re really glad we have an Asian girl on social media to represent us because there’s not a lot.” Fan said she appreciates the messages she receives and she’s proud of being an Asian female.
Because Fan’s followers look up to her, she likes to communicate with her followers on other social platforms aside from Vine. Fan prefers to use apps such as Twitter and Tumblr to communicate with her followers rather than on Vine.
“On Twitter and Tumblr I think I definitely address [current issues] a lot more,” said Fan.
Some of these current issues that she frequently speaks up about include racism and feminism because they hit close to home. She likes to use these apps because when people ask her questions, she can give them her opinion and have it be much more personal. She also gets a lot of people asking her questions about they should come out as gay, because knowing her strong acceptance for the LGBTQ community is known on Twitter and Tumblr.
She doesn’t like to use Vine to communicate with her followers as much, because “Vine is more about comedy stuff whereas Twitter and Tumblr I can talk about more serious stuff,” said Fan.
Aside from communicating with her followers, Fan also has to come up with ideas to actually post on her account. According to Fan, a lot of her ideas come to her in the shower. She then writes them down in the note section of her iPhone.
When it comes to actually filming one of her Vines, she just looks through the her ideas and picks which one she wants to do on that particular day. Her preferred filming location is, “…home alone where I can yell and scream..,” Fan said.
Fan said she doesn’t script out her ideas because they’re only six seconds, and they are not hard to memorize. “It does take me a while to get the right take I want to use,” said Fan. But once she has filmed a couple of options, Fan said chooses which one she thinks is the funniest and posts it onto her account.
Once Fan posts a Vine many people, including her followers and some people who don’t follow her, comment on her Vines. Most of the comments she gets are positive, but there are some hateful comments she has to deal with. Fan said that the comments are a price she has to pay for her popularity.
“At first I didn’t get offended,” Fan said, “but I was like ‘why would you take the time out of your day to say this?’ It doesn’t really bother me anymore because most are just low blows to the fact that I’m Asian or the fact that I’m a girl who is a comedian.” Fan used air quotes when she said comedian with a smile.
Even though Fan loves comedy, continuing with Vine isn’t the career path that she’s planning on taking. Fan said,“apps come and go,” so continuing with Vine as a career path would be a risky move knowing that what’s popular is always changing. Fan also said that continuing with Vine, “wouldn’t be as stable,” as going into a career like nursing, her current career choice.
While Fan doesn’t intend on making a career out of vine, many people do. Sponsorships are a big way that “Viners” make a living off of Vine. Companies ask popular Vine stars to make a Vine that showcases their brand. According to the Search Engine Journal, “branded Vines are 4x as likely to be seen than branded videos.” At only 17 years old, Lauren Giraldo, a comedic Viner, is one of the apps most popular Viners, with 3.3 million followers. According to the financial blog BusinessInsider.com, Giraldo makes about $2,000 per every sponsored Vine she posts and she makes anywhere from 1 to 30 sponsored videos per month.
Fan made this Vine about English speaking Spanish students. Made on April 27, 2015, this Vine was one of her most popular with over 21.8 thousand revines.
As well as Giraldo, Marcus and Cody Johns are two brothers who also make a lot of money from the app by making comedic styled Vines. At only 24, Cody Johns worked on an app campaign for a company that paid off his entire college tuition according to BusinessInsider.com.
Sponsored Vines aren’t really Fan’s forte, though. “I don’t really want to go down that route. It’s not my thing,” she said. Even though Fan has been approached by several small companies to sponsor their brands, she doesn’t know how that would even work being only 16. Also, she does not have a bank account she uses often.
Once Fan did a shout out Vine for one of her friends who created an app, making her $20.
But after she posted it, she found that her followers didn’t like it. In the comment section they said, “she’s gone to the dark side,” comparing the “dark side” to the Viners who post sponsored content on their accounts.
Although she doesn’t intend on making Vine a career, Fan said that she has no intention of stopping Vine anytime soon. One day she hopes to be able to go to a convention where she can meet her followers and her friends that she’s made on the app. And she definitely wants to continue to make Vines because people like them and she likes that people like them. She loves to make people laugh and make people happy.
Even with 300 thousand people following her, she said she tries to stay humble. “I make stupid jokes and that’s great, but I don’t consider myself famous,” Fan said, “I consider myself funny sometimes. I don’t consider myself a comedian, I’m just someone with a lot of followers on an app.”
Fan describes a moment at a funeral where someone says “Kobe,” while placing flowers in the casket. This Vine made on March 31, 2015 had 67.3 thousand likes.