"Planking" Meme

Clemmy Little

The phenomenon of planking is one prime example of a “meme”-an idea that goes viral online and becomes a global trend.

Planking is a photo fad that involves someone lying face down with their arms by their sides and juxtaposing themselves with an unexpected place.

The trend or better yet, prank, comes from a few people. The first group come from Somerset, England and in 2000 began lying face down in public places (the stranger the better) in hopes of being photographed and later posted on social networking sites. Inventors Gary Clarkson & Christian Langdon originally coined the act as the Lying Down Game. Down under in Australia is where the craze really picked up momentum. Sam Weckert and two other guys in the summer of 2008 began to plank on all sorts of objects, and anywhere for that matter. When Weckert decided to create an official Facebook fan page in order to share “planking” photos the outbreak took off.

Within the first week the page gained over 130,000 fans and as of today (26 Feb 2013) has over 1.1 million likes according to Facebook.

There are various theories as to why this became such a trend and incredibly popular. And although exhibitionism has been around for decades the transformation behind social media has changed the way the world will forever connect. YouTube, digital cameras, gopro’s along with many others have just taken exhibitionism into a whole new realm. I think what excites people about the activity is it’s complete ridiculousness. It seems to straddle the line between dangerous and funny. The more conspicuous and outrageous the setting, the more people are entertained.

These are the official planking rules:

1) The participants needs to be facedown during the entire activity. They ought to remain expressionless in the said act.


2) The legs must remain straight and will be together, with all the toes pointing.


3) The arms must be kept straight for the sides, fingers sharpened.


4) People who are doing the activity should make it known that they're doing so. Signs might be put up saying what these are doing or firmly announcing it for you to people would cause a good conduct yourself.


5) Safety should always come first. The procedures requires been planned out before you go to become successful.


6) All plank attempts has to be named and photographed.