'Our generation's inside joke': the bizarre, nostalgic afterlife of Vine

The seven-second video app may be dead, but its best clips are having a resurgence on YouTube. What does it mean for creators?

Helena Hadjiyerou, a 21-year old from the United Kingdom, operates one of the many microscopic channels bobbing around YouTube's vast, untamed network. For the most part she posts three-minute missives where she gossips about her neighbors or shows off her thrift store finds, and each of them earns a small 100-or-so views. The one exception is the file she uploaded in December.

It's a compilation of her favorite Vines - relics from the now-defunct social media platform where teens performed seven-second one-act-plays for the world. The video unfolds like a millennial highlight reel of memes and punchlines lovingly ingrained in any web-literate kid's cultural experience. She called it "Vines that were there for me when no one else was", and it's so far generated a mammoth 2.4m views.