There’s a new craze in town, haven’t you heard? Stretch your body across an unlikely object, take a pic of yourself, post it on Facebook, then act like you’ve done something really clever and original.
Don’t fall, though. If you do, you could end up like 20 year old Brisbane man Acton Beale, who is believed to be Australia’s first planking fatality after he fell from the balcony of a Brisbane apartment on the weekend.
Allow us to express our condolences to Beale’s family and friends. Now allow us to explain why planking is the dumbest thing we’ve heard of since train surfing, line dancing and Australian hip hop music.
For starters, it’s not spectacular. At least with fads like base jumping, you get 30 seconds of cool footage for Sports Tonight. With planking, all you get is a not very exciting shot of somebody squooshing their nuts. Or their boobs, as Kerri-Anne ably demonstrated the other day.
But let’s go big picture here. The really worrying thing about the planking phenomenon is that it embodies the worst of the herd mentality of social media.
At its best, social media can change the world, as the political uprisings in the middle east have shown.
But as much as social media has connected people with common interests and causes, it has merely connected others in stupidity. First came the idiots saying really vulgar things on Twitter (then feigning shock and dismay at the outrage caused).
And now we’ve got a bunch of plankers playing Jackass and posting the evidence online.
If you never saw the TV show and movie Jackass, it basically involved a bunch of young Americans doing really dangerous pranks. They weren’t professional stuntmen. But they were former skaters who were lithe and nimble dudes. Oh, and they also weren’t drunk when filming.
The same cannot be said of the majority of plankers out there, many of whom do their best work while plastered after a big night out. Indeed, Acton Beale had apparently just arrived home after a big night out when tragedy struck.
As mentioned, his death is extremely sad. But much of the reaction to it beggars belief.
Take this response from planker Dave Fenollar on the Planking Facebook site, which at the time of writing, had 90,000 “likes” and will probably have double that this morning.
“Planking doesn’t kill people. People choose what they like, love and want to do. People die from so many other recreational activities that carry a far higher risk and are not frowned upon. Correct me if i am wrong but haven’t people died riding dirt bikes, snowboarding and skydiving?. Acton Beale chose to plank, drunk or not it really doesn’t matter. He obviously loved doing it and chance wasn’t on his side. R.i.p fellow planker.”
Uh-huh. So planking doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
Well, actually, no Dave. Falling onto the ground really hard kills people. And planking is a ripper way to make that happen.
So by all means Australia. Drape yourself across the Golden Arches on the way home from the pub. Lie down on those balcony railings and train station signs and post your pics on Facebook.
If it really excites you that much, go right ahead. Don’t let us stop you. But there’s a movie you should watch first. Pretty sure it flopped and went straight to DVD but it’s out there somewhere. It’s called The Darwin Awards.
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@AndrewCatsaras Agreed. Kills more people than AIDS. Yet tolerated. Meanwhile: Good Insiders piece again Andrew.
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