Jasmeet Singh
Appearances
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Vine did not have an algorithm. Vine in the beginning had... maybe 15 creators on it. But the user base in the beginning of the app was probably like at least a million people were watching Vines. I mean, that's a small amount for an app, but if you consider 15 creators are making videos for a million people, then it's like, that's just a crazy, no one knew what to do with it except a few people.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And we all just became the people that just kind of entertained everyone for a while. And then people started to go, oh, this is a comedy app. This can be used for comedy. Then more people got the groove, figured out the rhythm of it and started doing that as well. And then more creators. But even at the end of Vine's lifespan, I mean, popular creators like who had like,
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
you know, millions of followers. It wasn't that many. It was maybe like 50 to a hundred, maybe, maybe. And that was what the user base, an audience user base of like, I don't know how many it had at the end of its lifespan, but like tens of millions of people were watching. But there wasn't an algorithm. You just got your following.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Um, there was a thing called the popular page where if you had a vine that got a lot of likes in an hour and a lot of likes back then was like 500 in an hour, you got on the top of the popular page and people went to the popular page because they just want to see, Oh, what's popular. And you would be the first thing they saw if your vine did well enough. It was, this is bringing me back.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
You would be like, Oh, I got to get at the top of the popular page. I got to get at the top of the popular page. It would be like network television, like getting the most amount of eyes, like the best ratings. It was like, oh, that show got this amount of viewers on it and we didn't and this show's doing great. It was like that, but with just people recording on their shitty iPhones.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
So I'm a bit of a shut in, meaning I don't really leave the house much. At least when I was a kid, I didn't leave the house much. But my 19th birthday, summer of 2013, me and my mom had this tradition where we would go to Disneyland every year for my birthday. And at that time, I had a million followers, which back then a million followers was a huge deal.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
So what happened was a lot of people were staring. But once one person comes up to you and ask for a photo and you do it, then everyone else feels comfortable. And then the floodgates open and they start to come. And I have never gotten that swarmed. Even to this day, I've never gotten that swarmed by people. And I was shocked because there's this disconnect. You don't think it's real life.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
You don't you don't compute that. Oh, yeah. These are all actual people that are watching these videos. And when you see it come at you in real life, it's it's very it's a lot. I mean, I was just a little finer. It was a huge shock when I hit one hundred thousand.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Yeah, I mean, I just literally couldn't even walk around Toronto anymore. Like, I could not get from point A to point B without getting mobbed, like, constantly. Like, before, if I go to an Indian restaurant or store, if I go to the Gurdwara, the temple, then I would get recognized. But now, everywhere I would go, it was, oh, this is another level. I went to the Drake concert.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And I was just getting, I could not move. Even the security was like, yo, who is this guy? Shouldn't he have security? Like what's going on? I couldn't go out into the main area. Like just hordes of people trying to get a selfie. People just lining up. I wasn't making crazy money. I'm still sitting in like the nosebleed section. Even the meaning at that time of celebrity had changed.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Influencers were now a thing. Like people wanted...
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
selfies from you know content creators even i was like why why i'm not even like i'm not i'm not brad pitt like what the hell i'm not freaking ryan gossling i didn't have a movie come out i was so confused before i was just only recognized by like you know fellow brown folk people were like oh i love your youtube and then all of a sudden it started changing like i love your vines i think it really took me to another level you know you had this specific audience of your community but then you suddenly had this platform where you could reach everyone in the world but without really changing what you were making
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
You know, there's a lot of racial tension happening in Canada right now. Just blatant racism that you see in the comment sections of any app. There's a lot of resentment that's coming forward, like tone of like there's too many Indians now. Canada isn't what it used to be anymore. There's a lot of that rhetoric and dialect that's being thrown around.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I mean, I think it's just important for people to see that we are. an artsy, creative community as well. That's what the internet has always been. For me, I've had like 65-year-old white dudes from Sarnia, Ontario coming up being like, man, dude, I love your videos, man. My wife, she's always, she's yelling at me because I'm always watching your videos on the internet.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And it's just like, what this guy that, I would have no other connection with this dude. It's really humanizing people, showing our arts and our culture. And it's disruption, claiming our ancestral lineage through these new means.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Cake Vine, I could only describe it as like an acid trip because it just didn't feel real when it was happening.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Yeah. What are you doing at the playground, Uncle Alec? I'm helping the community.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
No. Are you the guy that sells crack to kids? Yeah, that's me.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Yeah. I mean, Vine was, to me, it was like a lot of my young adulthood was just on Vine. I mean, I started when I was like, I think I was 18. And I associate most of that coming of age with Vine, for sure. We lived in a little town called Placentia in Orange County. And in Placentia, nothing happens. It's total suburbia.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
You go to school, you come home, maybe get McDonald's, eat, watch TV, that's it. Like, you don't do anything. And that's fine.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I just graduated. I was working at Subway, which was a nightmare. No, not Subway. They have great sandwiches, but that Subway I worked at was hell. And I wanted to become a filmmaker. That was my thing when I was growing up. I was like, that's all I want to do is become a director and a writer. So I think I heard about Vine from a podcast earlier.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And I downloaded it, and I just started to get addicted to it. People just making these really creative, funny videos that are so consumable and so repeatable, obviously, because of the looping aspect. It was so fun to watch on my break. It was fun to watch when I got on the bus ride home. It was fun to watch when I got home. And this was March 2013. Vine had just come out.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
No one was on there, really. And... I just remember being inspired by the people who were on there, who were doing funny videos, stop motion animation, stuff like that. I was like, I want to do this. I mean, this is easy. I'll just start to make videos. I'm just going to do it. And I did it. And things started to unfold from there very quickly.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Sir, I think I know how to spell Jasmine.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And I always wanted to go into film school. I just never, you know, just never really panned out in my household. I'm a child of an immigrant. So the arts within the South Asian community were really encouraged. The community really wants like people in our community to have prestigious jobs, like a doctor or engineer lord.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And so, you know, I was like, yeah, I guess I'll be a doctor, even though I really wanted to do film. I don't blame my parents. I get it. They wanted the best for me. So, you know, I was just like, all right, I'll just do this thing that's like set out for me. I was like doing biomed, planning to become a doctor. But I just... I didn't like it at all.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Yeah, I just always had an interest in film and I'm a big comedy nerd. And so I was doing YouTube at that time and it was finally an outlet for me to create stuff that I really wanted to do, like sketch comedy or just weird skits.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I went to India for a movie shoot. I was just there for like a few months filming, and I saw a lot of big trends on Vine, and I just really wanted to make fun of them. I was like a bit of a trend hater at the time. I started parroting like big trends on Vines and just doing them in India. It was just like a weird cultural shift. Take my own spin on it.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I used to go around India and ask people if they even listen to Drake. He's been popping for a couple of years in Toronto. And like a lot of Toronto guys would be like, yo bro, do you even listen to Drake? Like it was like a thing that I just took, but then I would do that in India. and everybody would be so confused. Like, what the hell is this guy talking about? Those really started popping off.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
To me, I was like, these are really easy and not that funny, but let me... Why are they so popular? Let me remake it and, like, do something absolutely dumb with it. I did, like, a Liam Neeson take-in parody. I don't think you understand. Your daughter will be dead in 24 hours.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I have this philosophy on a lot of things that I do. I think the more specific and nuanced it is and true to your experience, the harder it'll hit. Counterintuitive to whatever those boardroom algorithm people are saying. I'm always like, no, I just think the more specific it is, like that Taken series, an Indian dad getting a call that his daughter's been kidnapped.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
They give a ransom and he's like, ooh, and he's trying to like discount. He's like, I don't know. People in our community are known to be, you know, bargainers. Like I remember when I was like 10, I wanted a Game Boy Advance or something. And we're like going to the store and I remember my dad trying to bargain with the GameStop employee.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And the guy's like, some teenager, he's like, this is the price. My dad's like, $50? He's like, no, it's like $110. What are you talking about? Why is my dad trying to impress me too? He's like, all right, this is what we're going to do. We're going to walk out and then he's going to call us back. And I'm like, no, that doesn't work here. They have separate, this guy's like in high school.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
He doesn't care if you buy it or not. And so, you know, it's just like taking those experiences and plugging them into like,
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
The way you made Vines back in the day, back when it first started, was you could not do second takes. You had to get everything there. So you would record for a little bit and then you'd stop recording. You would record for a little bit and that would be like editing. It would be like editing a video, but it would be in real time.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
If you messed up, if you got somebody saying go in the beginning, you had to start all the way over. And if you were making just a silly little comedy video in your house, that wasn't a big deal.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
But if you were doing what some people were doing, which is like stop motion or traveling and trying to get a bunch of different locations perfectly for whatever reason, you needed to make sure that was perfect. Or you were screwed. So whenever you saw a video that seemed very intricate, those took a lot of work and a lot of messing up to get right. It was more dangerous, I think.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
That was fun about it. It was just like, you had to get it. You had to get it.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
It was like how back in the 70s, I don't mean to compare Vine to filmmaking in the 70s, but there were some similarities in the sense of like in the 70s, you're shooting on film. So you could only you couldn't really even see what you were filming. A lot of the time, a lot of the directors didn't really know. They only like saw what DP was seeing.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
And you rolled and you only had a certain amount of film. And if you checked the gate and that film had a piece of lint in it or the shot was over literate, that was it. That's all you had because you only had a set amount of film or else the budget went way over. So there's a lot of that kind of element with Vine in the beginning where you had to get everything in that time. You couldn't go back.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I mean, you didn't waste a bunch of money like a film production, but there could be great sections of a thing you were filming, but if one was off... then you have to start over.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
I'm shocked that it always works. I know. Let's get his wallet.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
Jeff's choice was probably... So dark. It was such a dark video. It was called Bad Babysitters. And it was me and my friend Jay Walker. And we're by this pool. The pool's in the background. He goes, babysitting is so easy. Yeah, I know. Our kid's so quiet. He hasn't said anything for like an hour. And then you see a body floating.
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World
3. Subway to Stardom
in a pool and it comes into frame perfectly as i say that and then somebody who's walking by goes is this your kid in the pool and then i go our kid can't swim it's very dark obviously the person in the pool was an adult man and it was all fake but the timing of it was perfect and that to me was what vine was about was getting everything perfect in one shot