When Planking Turns Deadly
MAY 25, 2011 TAGS:
If you haven't heard about the Internet craze called "planking," here's a quick primer. Youths around the world (but mostly in Australia) photograph themselves and their friends lying face down, like a plank, in strange, imaginative and daring places. These youths share those pictures via Facebook, Twitter, or other sites and bemuse themselves at how odd a human body looks when laid horizontal. Call it performance art-lite or an act of puerile dance intervention. But like other Internet memes, it's mildly humorous and very clickable.
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. On May 15th planking claimed its first victim.
According to the Daily Mail:
Acton Beale, 20, fell from the balcony of a block of flats in Brisbane, Queensland, after he tried to 'plank' on some railings.
This is thought to be the first time someone has actually died from the growing craze in which people lie face down in an unusual place before taking pictures and uploading them onto the internet.
A further question emerges, Is this the first time a meme (which can be defined as "a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like an esoteric inside joke") has killed someone? Whether the rising popularity of planking is a true organic Internet meme, or a product of traditional marketing by an Australian radio station is debatable. Adrian Chen at Gawker makes a case that planking isn't really a meme so much as a media creation, seizing upon parental fears and spreading through television and newspaper stories about a "dangerous" fad. Additionally, Chen agues that Beale's death was due as much to drinking as it was to planking.
So maybe the Internet didn't kill someone. Or maybe an intoxicated college-aged adult did something stupid, inspired by what he saw on the Internet. That certainly has happened before.
The macabre consequence of Acton Beale's death and the controversy it has spawned is a spike in planking's popularity on Facebook. A day after his death planking's "official" Facebook page had 147,371 "likes." Today 241,921 people "like" planking. It might be argued that Beale's death created the meme and not the other way around.
It's also useful to note that a counter meme has arisen that is billed as a safer alternative to planking. "Pilloring" is a vertical version of the plank. Let's hope this is the first and last time we have to write about pilloring (or planking) in these pages.
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. On May 15th planking claimed its first victim.According to the Daily Mail:
Acton Beale, 20, fell from the balcony of a block of flats in Brisbane, Queensland, after he tried to 'plank' on some railings.
This is thought to be the first time someone has actually died from the growing craze in which people lie face down in an unusual place before taking pictures and uploading them onto the internet.
A further question emerges, Is this the first time a meme (which can be defined as "a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like an esoteric inside joke") has killed someone? Whether the rising popularity of planking is a true organic Internet meme, or a product of traditional marketing by an Australian radio station is debatable. Adrian Chen at Gawker makes a case that planking isn't really a meme so much as a media creation, seizing upon parental fears and spreading through television and newspaper stories about a "dangerous" fad. Additionally, Chen agues that Beale's death was due as much to drinking as it was to planking.
So maybe the Internet didn't kill someone. Or maybe an intoxicated college-aged adult did something stupid, inspired by what he saw on the Internet. That certainly has happened before.
The macabre consequence of Acton Beale's death and the controversy it has spawned is a spike in planking's popularity on Facebook. A day after his death planking's "official" Facebook page had 147,371 "likes." Today 241,921 people "like" planking. It might be argued that Beale's death created the meme and not the other way around.
It's also useful to note that a counter meme has arisen that is billed as a safer alternative to planking. "Pilloring" is a vertical version of the plank. Let's hope this is the first and last time we have to write about pilloring (or planking) in these pages.
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