Tap Twice Games

About

Tap Twice Games, also known as Vine Games or Double-Tap Games are short video loops posted to the social media applications Vine and Instagram and subtitled with an invitation to the user to tap twice on the loop to play the game. The tapping both pauses and un-pauses the video, causing a game-like action to happen, and also gains the video a like, thereby increasing its viral appeal.

Origin

The original user of this technique is unknown; it’s possible that this manually edited version of Texas Hold’em, seen below left, was the first, as it dates back to September 11th, 2013.^[1] However, video loops in this style began growing in popularity on Vine in the middle of 2014, after an update to the application’s video tools allowed users to upload videos made with external cameras. Since users could import any video from their phone’s memory, it became simple to create loops in animation programs and upload them to Vine. The first instance to receive attention outside of Vine, a game using an image of Drake (below right), was posted by the popular user @DonJulio^[3] on December 27th, 2014, and received over 15 million loops in the first six months since its posting.

Spread

Since the entire purpose of the looping game is to facilitate more likes and loops for the video, many of these types of games have millions of loops and likes. Business Insider, when talking about the phenomenon, described Tap Twice Games as “addictive,” since users may try repeatedly to freeze the loop in the correct spot, causing, on Vine, many more loops per viewer than may have otherwise had^[4] Many accounts devoted to spreading viral videos, like WorldStar Funny (not related to WorldStar HipHop) and Amazing Vines post these types of videos frequently.^[5]^[6]