Bowie. Prince. Miss Cleo. This has been a very bad year in the Things That Give Me Hope department. One by one, those scattered rays of sunshine that once cut through the gathering darkness are dying out; and with each passing, a shiver perches more heavily on my shoulders. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. But, of course, there’s more to take: This time it’s Vine.

My dear, sweet Vine — is dead.

Or dying. Or will soon be dead. Twitter (Vine’s wicked stepmother who doesn’t care at all about anybody’s feelings) announced on Thursday it will pull the plug on the pioneering short-form video service “in the coming months.’’ Meanwhile, I suppose they will just stand there and watch it die, because they are monsters. I’m sorry. I need a minute. . .

Twitter offered no clear explanation for the discontinuation in its Medium post announcing the decision, just a vague assurance that they’d “be keeping’’ existing Vines (shorthand for the service’s looping 6-second videos) online to let them loop on indefinitely. It felt like when my parents explained how happy the dog was with his awesome new life on “the farm.’’ There is no farm, is there, Twitter?

I sound upset, I know. But I’m truly bummed to see Vine go. As social media networks go, it was one of the good ones.

Just a stone’s throw from Twitter’s howling hellpit of anonymous trolls were Vine’s rolling (and repeating) pastures of pleasures. And mere blocks away from the tinted filters and clickbait headlines of the news blogs were Vine’s unobstructed views of the world as seen from people’s palms. Somehow, Vine offered its viewers equally potent doses of fantasy and reality. And over its fast four years online, it didn’t attract legions of trolls and blowhards so much as give space to creators and witnesses.

Founded in the summer of 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll, and acquired by Twitter just months before its eventual launch in January of 2013, Vine’s quick rise to the top of the app heap (it took one day) took everyone by surprise. The true use value of a six-second loop was questionable, but it was a question that millions rushed to answer.

For Vine creators (and similar to those who came to love tweeting) the hard limits of the form defined a kind of poetic space. The built-in stricture of six seconds was balanced by the promise of looping perpetuity, and this odd alchemy of confinement and freedom made for creative gold.

Vine quickly developed its own cadre of micro-celebrities that made Justin Bieber’s rise atop YouTube seem positively old-fashioned. It gave us the pratfalls of Paige Ginn, the special effects wizardry of Zach King, Ryan McHenry’s attempts to force-feed spoonfuls of cereal to Ryan Gosling, and the harrowing edits of Vic Berger, to name just a few. It’s multiplied into well more than six seconds of notoriety for comedians like Liza Koshy and Brittany Furlan, singers like Shawn Mendes and (Norfolk native) Jeffrey Eli Miller, quirky acts like Us the Duo, and entertaining young weirdos like Brandon Bowen.

And after the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, just three months after its launch, Vine provided a view of the attack itself as well as the aftermath, as seen from various windows during the lockdown. From there, Vine emerged as one of the most crucial (if accidental) platforms for breaking news into fast, digestible bits. One year later, Vine was an essential tool for amplifying unheard narratives during the crisis in Ferguson, Mo.

Vine’s emphasis on short-form video broke the ground for Snapchat to flourish (the same turf Instagram is now infiltrating like a corporate weed). It gave video a brand new identity online, bound by six seconds, but liberated from boxy players, as free as a tweet.

Whether it would find itself as a platform for citizen journalism, or a showcase for young talent (“Vine is an entertainment community where things happen fast,’’ it liked to insist), or would simply stagnate into yet another social media reflecting pool, Vine never seemed able to decide. Twitter’s fear of commitment apparently runs in the family.

But Vine’s grander failure was doubtless an extension of its day-to-day failure as a destination or social hub — a shortcoming that’s understandable considering that millions upon millions of six-second loops don’t make for the most sane-making social environment. Spending any longer than 10 minutes scrolling or clicking through Vine leaves me gasping for linear time — and I enjoy them.

Besides, watching too many Vines in a row just feels wrong, like clearing a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Vines are best enjoyed sparingly, popping up in your feed like a surprise stuffed date. You don’t require 20 of them right now; there just need to be stuffed dates in the world from time to time. Not the best business model.

Vine eventually became more of an indicator of short video’s potential than the place where those possibilities were best explored. The live video capabilities and expansive reach of Periscope and Facebook Live largely eclipsed the journalistic appeal of Vine. And earlier this year, even Vine was trying to reimagine itself, enabling the creation of longer videos, and essentially rendering its signature six-second servings into trailers for more substantial portions. It was an admission of insufficiency that may have signaled the beginning of the end.

It was naive of me to expect a thing built on six seconds to last forever, but Vines have grown into such a ubiquitous feature of the online landscape, it’s odd to imagine the Internet without them.

Where will I go for the bite-size delight of watching Chris Christie tumble from a chair? Or for the gripping miniature mystery presented by a fuzzy cluster of what may be oh my god are those spiders?! Or to experience a tiny epic tale of friendship as told through six seconds of a girl dancing with her cat? Where else will a chorus of inflatable ducks cause my soul to tremble? Where will I hear Alex Trebek repeatedly try to channel Rihanna?

On the surface, and especially when held up as specimens of our shortening attention spans and collectively low bar for entertainment (and/or distraction), Vines can come off as cheap or meaningless — turbocharged GIFs with more potential to annoy.

But there’s an almost mantric satisfaction to be found in some Vines. A good one wastes nothing: You get both the precision of experiencing just the most essential moments of a given moment, and the indulgence of enjoying it over and over. On an Internet under siege by dangerous-stupid, Vine provided critical sanctuary for silly-stupid, a safe space for playfulness and invention, and a supply of quick laughs that I’d just assumed, by nature, was endless.

Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com.