Death can’t stop the planking
Participants lay face down, holding their arms to their sides and legs stiff as a board. They’re not sleeping, and they’re not dead. They are planking, and someone is likely photographing it. Some people think it’s ridiculous and pointless, while others ascend to great and dangerous heights for a truly legendary plank. The international fad requires nothing more than a camera and the ability to maintain a solid, horizontal posture.
History/origin of Planking
Fads involving people positioning their bodies in particular ways are nothing new. In the late 1950s, the fad was hunkering, according to Time magazine. Hunkering, or “hunkerin’,” was especially popular on college campuses and involved crouching down into a squatting position for extended periods of time. Large groups of people would gather and hunker together while reading, chatting or engaging in other forms of frivolity.
“Sophisticates hunker flatfooted. Real progressives hunker with elbows inside the knees,” states a 1959 Time article. The fad started at the University of Arkansas, when a fraternity house ran low on chairs, according to the article. Prior to hunkering, students were making special efforts to see how many people they could stuff inside phone booths.
Now, the fad is planking, not to be confused with the strenuous abdominal exercise. Planking has several rumored origins. The Hip Hop Democrat, an online media company and community, reported planking as a disrespectful mockery of the inhumane transportation of Africans on large ships during the slave trade.
However, a professor of Atlantic history at the University of Pittsburgh told the Washington Post in July, though the planks “of the lower deck are precisely where millions of Africans were forced to lie and sleep on the Middle Passage, in conditions of utter horror that defy description,” there is no “deliberate connection” between planking now and “planking” then. Some people learn of this possible connection and quit planking all together, and others plank on. Either way, the sentiment is in the eye of the planker.
KnowYourMeme.com, a database of Internet trends, credits the term “planking” to New Zealand resident Paul Carran, who came up with it in 2008 while living in Sydney, Australia. Former MTV host Tom Green claimed, with video evidence, to have started planking in 1994, according to the site. Professional rugby player David Williams planked after scoring a try in March, giving the fad even more energy.
Planking has also been traced to England where Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon started planking when they were teenagers. Fourteen years ago, they referred to it as the “Lying Down Game.”
“It was just a really stupid, random thing to do,” Clarkson told the Guardian, in May.
Elise Frederickson, a USU senior majoring in public relations, shared a similar sentiment for planking.
“I kind of think it’s awesome,” Frederickson said. “The funny thing about it is it is cool, but it doesn’t seem like it should be cool.”
Frederickson said she has never planked but has thought about gathering a group of friends to do so. The social aspect is a big factor in planking, she said.
According to the Guardian article, Clarkson and Langdon planked with close friends for 10 years, until they made a Facebook group for their planking adventures in 2007 and began receiving pictures of people planking internationally. Since then, the fad has only continued to grow globally, with online communities such as LyingDownGame.net and OfficialPlanking.com, which take the business as seriously as hoards of people lying stiffly, face-down can.
The Dangers of Planking
Planking has taken the world by storm. It is especially popular in Australia and Europe, according to the groups or planking teams assembled in those regions. Facebook lists dozens of these planking teams, categorized as professional sports teams. Some groups take it upon themselves to compete with others for the most extreme planks.
While it is a seemingly harmless activity, there is something to the advice of mothers everywhere: “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.” For planking, that somebody was the 20-year-old Australian Acton Beale, and he didn’t just get hurt but killed. He was planking on his seventh-story balcony, in May 2010, when he fell to his death, according to an MSNBC report.
Beale’s death fails to ward plankers off from their new, favorite pastime. People continue to plank wherever, and whenever, they want.
A Planking Alternative
Just as planking wasn’t the first of its kind, it won’t be the last. Some people have already branched into a new sort of body positioning and public expression. Bryson Bellaccomo, a USU senior majoring in molecular biology, is one of these progressive thinkers.
“I have planked a few times,” Bellaccomo said. “I can’t say that I was necessarily a large fan of planking. I would consider myself a victim of a fad. In a situation where planking is an option, I would choose ‘owling.'”
Owling?
“Owling is, basically, taking the form of an owl perching and watching, maybe, some prey,” Bellaccomo said.
But, owling isn’t for everyone, he said.
“I think that the real point of owling is actually more for paying tribute and respect to Hedwig, Harry Potter’s owl,” Bellaccomo said. “It’s not something that can be done by everyone; it’s mostly for people who are part of the wizarding world. It’s also a nod of the head to hunkering.”
Bellaccomo said he has owled thousands of times, and it is something he feels everyone with “the correct credentials” should do.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Josh Nielson sided with owling as well.
“I’m a big fan of owling, but planking sucks,” Nielson said. “I’m anti-plank, pro-owl, because owling provides much better pictures compared to planking, and it actually takes a little bit of dexterity and balance and muscle.”
Nielson said he planked once, at a planking party two years ago.
“I felt like it was the worst party ever,” Nielson said. “A bunch of people lying on the ground, straight, and nobody’s touching. You could be cuddling, you could have a kissing party, you could have a “Jersey Shore” party, but a planking party? It was pretty stupid.”
There’s plenty of time to assume a stiff, anti- or pro-planking stance. The next global planking day isn’t for eight months, on May 25.
– noelle.johansen@aggiemail.usu.edu