Kenji Ueki: Planking

Planking

The term planking refers to the act of laying down on a surface where you hold your body still with your arms and legs straight like a wooden plank. The picture below illustrates the act of “planking.”                        

Tom Green – a comedian known for his pranks – claims to be the person who invented planking where he first did it in 1994 and was caught by a video camera. However washingtonpost claims that the beginnings of planking may come from a scene from the movie The Program. It first became popular in the North East region of England and this game has spread throughout the rest of the world with different terms such as “playing dead” and “facedowns.” According to the website “knowyourmeme.com”, the planking fad started in 2006 when two British students posted pictures of them planking.

            I believe this fad became so popular because it is easy to do – all you need is their body and someone else to take a picture of you doing it. Moreover, the rise of social media sites allowed for this “game” to spread at quicker pace. This game caught on  because people would upload these pictures and then everyone else would try to outdo each other by planking in more innovative places. However, planking has received some backlash since it has caused several injuries and at least one death.

            According to google trends, planking started to gain popularity over the web right after 2011 and hitting a peak search volume in mid-2011. Since then it has decline dramatically and now is not nearly as popular as it once was with a search volume of around 5. The lifespan of planking during its popularity was around one year, the year 2011.

            Several variations have evolved off planking, which include teapotting, owling, horsemanning, batmanning,  tebowing, and leisure diving. My personal favorite variation is leisure diving where one dives into a pool with their body as parallel as possible to the surface doing something casual such as pretending to sleep. As leisure diving became a little more popular it got a lot more creative to the point where people would use props. Pictures of leisure diving are included below.