Why Vine Was a Bad Match for Twitter

On Sunday, October 23rd, Michael Pachter and a friend took out the boat they jointly own, a Boston Whaler, on the Pacific Ocean, to watch the final day of the Breitling Huntington Beach Airshow. Like most air shows, it promised to entertain spectators with the sight of gaudily painted fighter jets performing impossible stunts in close formation. After the show, as Pachter was motoring the eight miles back to Long Beach, four F-16s—part of the United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, known as the Thunderbirds, which had headlined the show—rocketed past, flying low overhead on their way back to Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base. They flew past “literally a hundred yards away—so loud it was earth-shattering,” Pachter said. His immediate impulse was to pull out his phone and record a video of their booming flight.