POINT: We Need To Save Vine / COUNTERPOINT: If Anyone Cared About Vines, Our Rainforests Wouldn’t Be Disappearing

Point

We Need To Save Vine

By: Rebecca McKinley
point-vineWe need to save Vine.

That’s really all there is to it. These hilarious six-second videos have totally, like, changed my life. Have you seen the one where that guy is like “Do it for the vine”? That revolutionized comedy! We need to preserve these essential art forms so that our children and our children’s children will know that they can still enjoy art even if their attention spans don’t last longer than a few seconds.

I know, I know, we’ll still have YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. But the fact of the matter is, Vine is not like any of these other social media site . It’s a totally original and super unique thing. A world without the “I found my berries” vine? I’m so shook.

It’s one thing to stop people from making more vines, but to take the entire program off the market? RUDE! I am so not into that! People have dedicated their lives to this thing. Vine is, like, the reason I failed Honors Chem last year. I didn’t make that sacrifice just to have my all-time favorite app wiped out from beneath my feet.

I don’t care how much time we have until they take the app off the market. I don’t care if they swear they won’t delete all of those precious videos. Vine can’t leave me. We must save it.

Counterpoint

If Anyone Cared About Vines, Our Rainforests Wouldn’t Be Disappearing

By: Jana Topkins

counterpoint-vine

I don’t know why so many people are suddenly concerned about saving this particular vine, but after years of environmental advocacy, I can say with confidence that those of you attempting to preserve the vine are, quite frankly, barking up the wrong tree.

Look around you. How many people are actually taking steps to live sustainably? I can tell you, it’s not enough. It’s not because they don’t know any better, either. Studies show that more than 70% of Americans recognize that deforestation is a huge issue, but I personally guarantee that the vast majority of those people take few, if any, steps to help stop it. For this reason, our rainforests continue to disappear at alarming rates.

I have tried to get people to care about vines. That was part of my “Tarzan’s Home” campaign in 2000. I wrongly assumed that people might be inclined to pay attention to our rainforests since the endearing cartoon Tarzan had come out only a year before. I hoped that by drawing attention to the vines that Tarzan swung from frequently throughout the film I could invoke an emotional attachment to the rainforests and encourage some actual action to be taken. That couldn’t have been more wrong. People don’t care about the rainforests, they don’t care about trees, and they certainly don’t care about those scraggly little vines.

Hate to break it to you, but if huge environmental agencies with millions of dollars of backing can’t get people to care about vines, you teens probably can’t either.

Welcome to the world of activism.