Black and white photo of a hooded person pottering on a broom in a Japanese city street

Pottering

2013photo faddead

Published September 23, 2026

Pottering is a 2013 photo fad where people jumped in the air with a broom clamped between their legs to mimic a flying Quidditch player from Harry Potter. The trend broke out of an Australian Facebook group and got rebranded by Buzzfeed under the alternate name Quidditching.

photo fad memes body pose memes australian memes early 2010s memes fandom hype memes

Overview

The Pottering photo fad works by hiding the top of a broom behind the jumper's body mid-air so the stick appears to run under the legs like a Quidditch broomstick from the Harry Potter books2. Photographers time the shutter at the peak of the jump, often against backdrops that sell the flying illusion, such as pools, sports fields, staircases, and open streets.

Participants on Reddit and Facebook framed Pottering as the wizarding entry in a family of action-photo fads that included planking, Hadokening, and Vadering, with the broom gag replacing the plank or the invisible energy blast2. The term itself is a play on the Harry Potter name, though the word "pottering" also carries older British and Irish slang meanings unrelated to the meme, such as puttering around on odd jobs or quietly hiding from social platforms1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Reddit (earliest photo) / Facebook (viral spread)
Date
2013

The earliest widely shared example came in August 2012, when Reddit user 93tillinfiniD posted a photo titled "You're a wizard, Harry!" showing a man leaping from a window into a pool with a broom held between his legs. The image pulled in more than 16,000 upvotes and about 950,000 Imgur views over the next eight months2. The individual behind that jump is not documented, and the Pottering meme name itself would come from a separate Australian effort the following spring.

How It Spread

On March 5, 2013, three Australians launched a Facebook group called "Public Pottering" that invited people to submit mid-air broom photos. The page collected more than 4,800 likes and over 50 submissions inside 30 days2. A link posted to the Harry Potter subreddit on March 11 only picked up around 30 upvotes, so the format sat mostly on Facebook for the next few weeks.

On March 30, Australian outlet News.com.au ran a feature story calling the trend a "more innovative" version of planking2. The same day, Redditor jb2386 assembled 23 photos from the Facebook group into an Imgur gallery and shared it to r/pics as a follow-up to Hadokening and Vadering. The r/pics post underperformed at 38 upvotes, but a repost to r/harrypotter on April 3 climbed to more than 2,100 upvotes2.

Two days later, Buzzfeed tweeted one of the gallery images under the alternate label "Quidditching," pulling in more than 100 retweets and 80 favorites within two hours2. After that spring burst, the fad faded like the planking and Vadering trends it was compared to, and Pottering is now looked back on as one of the short-lived 2013 jump-photo crazes.

Timeline

2012-08

Redditor 93tillinfiniD posts "You're a wizard, Harry!", a photo of a man jumping into a pool with a broom between his legs.

2013-03-05

Three Australians launch the "Public Pottering" Facebook group inviting mid-air broom photos.

2013-03-11

A link to the Facebook group is shared on r/harrypotter, gaining around 30 upvotes.

2013-03-30

News.com.au runs a feature calling Pottering a "more innovative" form of planking; Redditor jb2386 posts an Imgur gallery to r/pics.

2013-04-03

The Imgur gallery is reposted to r/harrypotter and climbs past 2,100 upvotes.

2013-04-05

Buzzfeed tweets a Pottering image under the alternate label "Quidditching," drawing 100+ retweets.

Frequently Asked Questions