Short Form Video That Doesn't Suck

2025-04-06

Short form video gets a lot of shit on this side of the internet. By short form video I'm referring to tik toks, youtube shorts, instagram reels etc. I wonder, is it actually the short form video itself that sucks, or is it the technological and corporate context surrounding it? There's actually plenty of shorts that I like, for example watching the new, camman18 minecraft related short every day has become a nice routine, japaneat makes fairly generic food reviews entertaining by virtue of being a genuinely good writer, and flesh simulator makes let's just say very "informative" videos. So there are some shorts youtubers I like, and having also briefly experimented with being on both tik tok and rednote in the past, I can say with some confidence that although the majority of short form video is slop, there really are some people using the format well.

The problem is not short videos themselves. Many people are nostalgic for "old youtube", and the average video length back then would fit in a short today. The problem is the scrolling, algorithmic content delivery method. The format makes videos disposable, and presents them in an addictive endless stream where the signal-to-noise ratio is designed to work like gambling. And on the side of the creator, it's full of the same growth mentality, updoot seeking hooks that all "social" media is, with the added bait of a paltry monetary carrot dangled just far enough away to seem possibly attainable. Short videos are fine, but the platforms which host them are garbage.

So here's my idea, what if there were a different format to share short videos. One which didn't have any of the "social" media bullshit traps, and was designed to be shared among a community by hand. I thought about this, if this wasn't video but text, how would this work? Well, this problem was solved a long time ago, they're called zines.

I'm calling this idea the Video Zine, or "Vine" (pronounced "Veen"), because it's a play on Vine, the original short video platform and I think that's funny. A Vine is a compilation of short videos onto a webpage, designed to be shared among a particular community and no further. The videos, being short, are easy to host since the file sizes are small. Being a more flexible format, there is no limitation to just video, the Vine may also include artworks and text surrounding the videos, and perhaps some "shorts" are just audio files accompanied by static images to further reduce file sizes. Vines are hosted on independent websites, not "platforms". They do not have view counters, like buttons, or comment sections, but they are syndicated via rss or atom.

Maybe it should be spelled "Viine" to clarify the pronunciation and distinguish itself from that other dead platform, I'm not sure. Am I going to make one of these Vines? Maybe, I could throw together a proof of concept with some friends for sure. But frankly, I don't think I'm the best person for the job. This is more of a concept I want to see other people pick up, because I know they could manage it better than me. If this sounds fun, grab some mates and put one together. And if you do, send it to me, my contact information can be found on this website.