I first heard of planking when hanging out with some Australians a couple of months ago. I had never heard of it, and they told me that it's lying down across two things and taking a picture.
I thought "huh, that's such a boring and lame. Australians are sure weird for thinking that lying across two things and taking a picture of it merits the title of 'game.'"
But lately planking has been coming up more and more, to the point where I've had to acknowledge that it's not just the Australians. This is a worldwide phenomena of lameness.
Naturally, being the generous soul that I am, I assumed that there must be more to this "meme" of "planking" than just lying across two things and taking a picture of yourself. After all, global phenomena are generally fun and cool on some level, right? If it's an activity that's exciting and dangerous enough to die for (as apparently someone did), it must involve some kind of actual skill and prowess greater than holding your body rigid without support across your stomach, right?
For my answer, I turned to none other than Wikipedia. What did I find? I found that there is not more to planking than taking a picture of yourself lying across two things. There is actually LESS to planking than taking a picture of yourself lying across two things.
It's lying down.
That's it.
Lie down in a funny place.
Take a picture.
You have now planked, congratulations! You've participated in, wait for it, "the lying down game".
It's a game where you lie down.
So a frustrated parent invented this, right? "Hey kids, I know what we should do! No, no, we shouldn't keep throwing pieces of burning brick dipped in poo at Mommy's hair. Let's play... let's play the lying down game! Yeah! Yeah, it's a real game, I swear! You lie down in a funny place and Mommy will take a picture and post it on the internet and you will be famous! Here! Let's all lie down!!! Yaaaaay! Okay now Mommy's going to go get the camera - stay lying down until she gets back to take a picture. Don't come find me, now matter what kind of horrible wailing you hear from the other room, that's just the sound the camera makes when it's turning on. PLANKING! HOORAY!"
Those gullible children listened and the world has never been the same.
Here's the photo that accompanied the Wikipedia page:
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this? This is a game! A GAME! Do people remember what games are supposed to be? This has to be surefire evidence that the internet is destroying our imaginations, because when I was a child our games involved finding Maleficent's horns in the bushes, pretending to be royalty while eating dinner, and dressing up our Barbies for dates. Sure, I tried to convince my cousin that we should play "use your eyes" and watch TV/read comics, but even I knew as I was suggesting it that the idea was lame. I just didn't want to play with the horse figurines again*.
Come on, children of the world! There is more to life than taking pictures of yourself lying down! At least imagine that you're a dying worm and act like you're frying to death.
*I'm exaggerating for the sake of the story, cuz! Your horses were rad!
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