PLANKING

By: Anne Riis Waerstad

Planking, also called the Lying Down Game, is an activity where you are lying face down with both hands touching the side of your body. Preferably also in a strange location, although many has planked in what can be seen as very usual places. The goal is to have a picture posted on the Internet and to plank in the strangest place. This is a phenomenon that spread over the entire world.

There are two groups who argues which where the ones inventing the phenomenon of planking, two friends in Somerset who invented it under the name “The Lying Down Game” in 2000, and also as planking in Australia in 2008. It was in Australia the meme grew mostly in popularity, however Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon, in Somerset, were supposedly the first ones who started planking, when they started lying down in public to get people to take pictures of them. Planking grew largely in popularity in 2011 when many joined in on the prank by posting pictures on different social networking sites. So why did this become so popular? First of all the prank is utterly ridiculous. Consisting of a person lying face down in a given place. Although when it started to take of it became somewhat of a contest as to see who could get the craziest picture. The phenomenon of planking also has its backside, on May 15^th, 2011 Acton Beale, a 20 year-old man died from planking when he fell from a balcony.

The meme started in 2000, but took some time before it became really popular. First in 2007 when Daniel Hoppin took it online with a Facebook group. Then in 2011 it accelerated.

 

Other memes have also emerged from planking, or is at least seen as other variations of the meme, among them is Teaspotting, arrived shortly after planking accelerated in popularity. The goal is to bend the arms in the shape of a teapot. Horsemanning, which involves posing two people so they appear to be one body with a detached head, and Batmaning, hanging upside down by your feet.