MegaMan Lounge

Several months ago, I was gilded on reddit.

From the wiki:

Reddit is an entertainment, social networking service and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links. Only registered users can then vote submissions "up" or "down" to organize the posts and determine their position on the site's pages. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called "subreddits".

It's probably also the #1 reason I don't update this blog as often as I used to.

If you leave a comment or a post on reddit that someone really likes, they can upvote it and they can also "gild" it. Give you "reddit gold". It's something they have to pay real money for, which obviously supports reddit.

One of the perks of being gilded is that you gain access to a new subreddit -- exclusive to gold-owners -- called The Lounge. Each gilding gives you 1 month of access to The Lounge. I was gilded 4x so I was initially granted 4 months of access -- which I figured would get me through my latest gig. My latest gig is almost over now... but I've been gilded so much since then, I currently have 10 months and 9 days of reddit gold left.

There's more.

If you get gilded in The Lounge, you gain access to another exclusive subreddit called "Mega Lounge". In Mega Lounge, you have permanent access even if you run out of gold. Once you're in, you're in.

And if you get gilded in Mega Lounge, you gain access to "Mega Mega Lounge".

It's a rabbit hole. It goes on for a while.

All of this is a long way of setting up the fact that I created a spin-off subreddit called "MegaMan Lounge". It's invitation only, but people need to be in the Mega Lounges before they can qualify for access. What is "MegaMan Lounge"? It's hard to explain unless you're familiar with the lounges, but it's essentially a place where people can share glimpses of each other's worlds. I rarely leave NYC these days but someone on MegaMan Lounge could post a picture of the view out their window... and suddenly, I've got a glimpse of Australia. Or Belgium. A woman from Arizona might post a pic from her jogging path. There's tons of custom flair I created for the sub; it's sort of a videogame/pop-culture-themed masquerade ball offshoot from the public lounges. And yes, it's a little hard to explain/pitch unless you've been through the lounges.

To go along with the theme of sharing glimpses of each other's worlds, I used a time-lapse app to record the walk from my office to the bank:

test-a 1 from MPH on Vimeo.