Pardon this rare text post, but I’d like to talk about the community for a moment. On August 3, 2021, I created this subreddit hoping to find others who get distracted by floaty things like I do. I knew this would be really niche, but after a year, there are 256 airheads here! I feel like my original set of seven rules did the job well and I recently made them official, reportable rules. Our original ten post flairs have also passed their flight tests and I don’t need to change them. By the way, post flairs aren’t strictly required, and if I see a post without one, I’ll just flair it myself. I did add 100 user flair emojis that mean nothing, use whatever you like. I recently added an RES-compatible night mode for Old Reddit based on the night mode I made for /r/wordle, but I made some additional tweaks for Old Reddit and New Reddit.

Your votes have helped me gain more understanding of what’s universally cool about floating, and what I might just be weird about. Some posts get boosted unfairly when I crosspost them to other subreddits, but I get the idea.

Here are the top ten posts of the first year of /r/FloatingisFun:

  1. Harta #91 cover by Katsu Somehira Space - 58 votes
  2. Senpai! I Can Float! by Hanako (Jiji) Weightlessness - 44 votes
  3. Flip Flappers Blu-ray volume 6 cover by tanu Levitation - 41 votes
  4. Minion in the Museum by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Balloons - 36 votes
  5. Flight Magic Night by kou Levitation - 26 votes
  6. Tetra Cube α #2 by D D a l Space - 24 votes; submitted by /u/GilgameshWulfenbach
  7. Wunder by Kazari Tayu Space - 25 votes
  8. The Wind Rises by rtil Wind power - 24 votes
  9. Flying Magic OWO by Kutsu Levitation - 22 votes
  10. Kiki’s Delivery Service fanart by MyMoonJelli Multiple types - 21 votes in 4 days

So basically, y’all like cute things. You prefer fantasy floating over real things floating, characters over inanimate objects. Oh, and you really don’t like video submissions, but short gifs are OK. It matters less that it’s floating in an interesting way and matters more that the post is generally really cool and detailed even without its floating context.

Thank you for all your support. This subreddit is still young, and I need more input from the peanut gallery. Please post floaty things you think are cool. Basically everything that floats in the air is permitted as long as you follow the rules: credit the creator, link to the source, and avoid reposts, littering, distress, and NSFW content. Bring your best and we’ll continue to soar to new heights!

  • hitstun@fedia.ioOPM
    1·
    1 year ago

    Fair points, but there are reasons for those.

    The rules and tags help define what is and isn’t accepted by Floating Is Fun. I left it fairly open to interpretation, and I want the readers to post what they want to see without me dictating everything. That said, the first three rules are fairly universal among art communities on Reddit, the Fediverse, and beyond. Give artists credit and don’t shamelessly repost stuff that’s already here. I had to differentiate between floating and engine-powered flight, so there’s a rule for it. I don’t want anyone to submit videos of themselves doing harmful things, so no releasing balloons into the sky, no floating anyone without consent, and no making anyone worry about anyone falling and getting hurt. I don’t want to run a porn group, so no NSFW content. The various balloon and body inflation fetishes are whole other levels of weird that would scare people away, so my rules filter out most of it without spelling it out.

    As for all the links to Reddit, there are things I haven’t yet ported to the Fediverse, like the rules page and the wiki. Reddit is collapsing, and when it shuts down for good, everything that used to be on /r/FloatingIsFun will be safe here on /m/FloatingIsFun. Eventually, I want nothing hosted on Reddit anymore. I need to find a new host for the currently Reddit-exclusive videos because Kbin and Lemmy don’t allow video uploads.

    In this post I wrote last year, I talk about Reddit a lot because Reddit hadn’t flushed itself down the toilet yet. This post is part of Floating Is Fun’s old content, archived here accurately except that links to Reddit were changed to Fedia links where possible. The remaining old text posts discuss shutting down the subreddit in protest, and I might exclude them from this archive. In about a month, I’ll be posting new content and I won’t be referencing Reddit anymore. Good riddance.