Planking
 

Some of you know that an Australian man died a couple of months ago while planking: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/90603.html

So, yeah, I believe that planking is DUMB DUMB DUMB. It is dumb even when not done in a dangerous manner.

In addition, some people believe that planking has roots in slavery and that some of the earlier plankers were imitating photos of slaves.

I think planking is dumb regardless but I now see how planking can seem similar to images of slavery. It's still the same level of dumb...but now some people consider it offensive.

Read below and see what you think. If this isn't your kind of topic, peace out. ;)

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...7EhDLrVIsfTfsw

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesci...-powerraw.html

http://www.theblackurbantimes.com/20...r-plank-again/

http://www.theblackurbantimes.com/wp...ge-300x194.jpg

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...fWaJd5Cetj2A3g

Planking has as much roots in slavery as Tommy Hilfiger and Gloria Vanderbilt going on Oprah saying their clothes weren't meant for black people.

It was a stupid game started in Australia by some stupid kids to take photos in the most outrageous places and whoever had the craziest place won the game. Unfortunately thanks to Twitter and Facebook it has affected America.

Those pictures are sad and grotesque. The number of people who died in the crossing is staggering. I can't even imagine how horrible it would feel to be confined in planks.

That being said, just because it has a similar name doesn't mean that it has anything to do with the stupid planking trend. Doing "planks" is an abdominal exercise. Why someone thought it would be a good idea to do planks on things and post pictures is beyond me. Then again, a lot of these Internet trends are.

This is where the slave trade part came in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_down_game


This was one group who purposely made a comparison. The origins were however, not to imitate slave planking. Apparently England forgets its culpability in the slave trade.

I have learned something new . . . something stupid and new.

I had never heard of 'planking' before today, but it is pretty obvious to me that lying down in dangerous places is a dangerous thing to do.

Obvious point aside, despite the name, and it's not clear from wiki which names are more common where for sure, yet it seems that 'planking' is popular in Australia and NZ, but the 'lying down game' is more common in England (and that name is so very British of them.) My guess is that despite the name being the same, there's not really any connection between the planking 'game' and the use of the term in regards to the slave trade. Particularly since Australia and NZ are unlikely to make the connection. Were the game more similar to the slave trade practice - such as squeezing large numbers of people onto the floor of a small room - I'd see a connection. Although I can see how people would draw the similarities, and might be concerned about the use of the practice, I don't see an actual link.

And @AOIIAngel - In my experience, England acknowledges its role in the slave trade,sometimes better than the US does, but they also abolished slavery in England in 1772, and banned the trade in 1807 throughout the Empire and abolished slavery in the empire in 1833. From 1808 on, they seized slave ships and freed slaves, signed anti-slave treaties with African rulers and overthrew those who would not abolish slavery. (Not that this was all awesomesauce, colonialism isn't all of a sudden amazing just because they abolish slavery or anything.) So there's a sense that Britain 'got it right' much faster than the Americans and didn't require a civil war to do it.

Or at least that's the impression I've gotten.

I keep seeing these photos on facebook but I don't get it. What do people get out of it?

Fixed it for you. :cool:

My old college friend posted the "roots in slavery" argument and I countered that, even if the Australians who started this crazy knew slaves were laid in this position, I highly doubt slaves were the very first people to ever lay flat on the ground. I don't minimize how awful slavery was but not everything "controversial" in America has to be correlated to slavery or the civil rights movement.

I think planking is stupid, but every time I see someone comparing it to slavery, I give a huge side-eye.

Some people have already moved on to even dumber things such as "coning". This is where someone orders an ice cream cone from a fast food restaurant, drives up to the window and then takes the ice cream off of the cone with their hand or grabs the ice cream upside down and eats the cone portion. There is also "owling", where someone perches on top of things like an owl.

I saw the "coning" thing online or on TV and thought it was ridiculously dumb.

I haven't heard of "owling," though, but this shit is getting stupidererer by the minute.

Which raises the question.. are people getting more stupid or do they just have an avenue to show the world just how stupid people really are?

The silly stupid shit we all have done with our friends is now posted online and imitated by others. It's both stupid and kind of cool.

/never did any of the above things, but I know we had our own stupid shit

Avenue and copycats.

Christiangirl, this form of planking did not begin in America therefore the comparison to slavery is not based on Americans who plank. Also, as you know, slavery did not begin in the U.S. and The Middle Passage was not just about North Americans going to Africa and other continents to get slaves. And those slaves were sent to North America and other continents. Therefore, despite what textbooks and the mainstream has led people to believe, talking about slavery =/= talking about North America unless you are talking about what happened to slaves once they got to North America. This topic isn't about that.

These are examples of the plank exercise that I do regularly:

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...EdaqT7bFfuj1uN
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...CnsQkR-DMWJApe

While some plankers look like they're doing the plank exercises, others do not. And I'm sure most plankers are just imitating other plankers; and those who may have been imitating slave ships would never admit to it in public. Either way, I don't agree with the slavery comparisons but I don't dismiss them as stupid or completely misdirected. A lot of things exist that I either disagree with or don't know about. Many things are just worth being aware of regardless of whether you agree or will lose sleep over them.

Light as a feather ...... stiff as a board .......

I have heard the argument raised that planking is supposed to imitate the horrid conditions slaves faced on their Atlantic voyage. I 100% agree with Drolefille on this. There is no way People from Australia and NZ would have even thought about that. I think it's a silly fad that will pass in a few years.

They can see photos just like I can. I'm not saying they did think of that, I just don't see why they wouldn't and couldn't.

******

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...cI_jr8lqtinFQQ
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...M90RAMwV-CvC9w
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...WyRCVCww6x5HkA

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...STz_KvrplWFHUw

It's very much a fad. It's easy to after-the-fact find images that look similar to what happened on some slave ships...or anything else that planking looks similar to. These people were probably just thinking "oh how cool to be still on a ladder/in some water/on each other's backs...don't move...." Yet, since there are millions of brains and we don't all think alike, it is possible...yet unprovable...for some people to intentionally imitate photos of slave ships. I'm neither selling nor buying that just yet.

Speaking of (tongue in cheek) after-the-fact:

http://curiouspresbyterian.wordpress...ical-practice/

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo...cirdo1_500.gif

This is relevant to the conversation. :D

If the fad was never named planking would this thread or debate even exist? If the Ozzies named this fad "boarding" instead of "planking" would people still try to make the slavery connection?

Yes.

There is always a group.

That's why I don't go to picnics.

Lol.

Oh yay! The fun rhetorical question game.

Would people still feel some kind of way about the word "niggardly" if it didn't remind them of another word?

How come no one says "it's only a game" when their team is winning?

Whatever happened to Preparations A through G?

Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?

I'm glad I got those off of my chest. With that said, would that statement be received differently if someone were to say "I have to get something off of my breasts?"

You finished?

Seems to me that people have an issue/making connections with the slave trade because of the game being called planking. I do think that if this was known worldwide as only "The Laying Down Game" people wouldn't make the connection, or it would be a much smaller group of people who would. And on the opposite side, I'm sure if this fad was started in South Carolina instead of overseas everybody and their mother would think that they were mocking the slave trade practice. I knew about the planking fad but this thread is the first time I've heard someone make a connection to slavery. I, like most people, don't think it is connected.

Never.

How does the guy who drives the snowplow get to work in the mornings?

If nothing ever sticks to teflon, how do they make teflon stick to the pan?

Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical questions?

What about picnic?

What does picnic have to do with this?

Guys, planking is so last month. This is what's hot.

http://leisuredive.com/

Gal, thanks for sharing this with us. I foresee a lot of idiots being hurt doing this new fad.

(Is this real? Some of those photos were hilarious. Some of them looked photoshopped and some of them looked real.)

The site claims all of the dives are real in the 'About' section of the site.

Somebody gonna snap their neck!!!!!!

Oh how I miss late 90's-early 2000's mass chain emails/urban legends :rolleyes:. This picnic one must have been lost somewhere in my inbox between the AIDS airplane guy and the blacks losing the right to vote.

Ok...... I so want to do that....

You're kidding. This is so retro. Bugs Bunny did it first.

LMAO!!! i shouldn't have read this at 2AM.

sweet, another site for me to waste my time on. lol.

Some of those were pretty funny, and then some were just people trying to show off nice bodies. They soooo didn't get the point of the exercise. But who didn't do this as kids? Anyone with a pool, a diving board and time on their hands did goofy dives. We just didn't have high speed digital cameras to catch the fun. My brother and I would have been doing this for hours if we weren't kids before the digital age.

This.

My siblings and I didn't do that as kids. I always hated diving boards and the idea of jumping in pools. Doing stunts like that (i.e. doing a side pose while reading a newspaper) is a recipe for disaster. Eventually.

When we were little, we used to drink gallons of water or koolaid at one time to see who could drink the most the fastest.

Years later, I learned it is called "drowning" and people have been seriously injured and died from that. It has happened with water drinking contests and has been used in hazing practices. Does that mean that it wasn't dangerous when we used to do it? No, it means that the people years ago who were seriously injured and/or died weren't publicized.

This is one of those times where I'm going to say things like "Everyone's done it" and not mean literally everyone. I've known a lot of people who did goofy dives and even some of the poses here. I won't disagree that someone will get hurt from it, but someone will get hurt on a diving board this summer regardless. It's one of those things

Which is why i more often say that everyone's done ~something~ that fits into the 'stupid kids' category.
Yep you're exactly right. Now that said your average kid is probably not going to be motivated to over hydrate themselves to the extreme that a contestant/hazee is, because most kids will stop themselves when they feel ill, but your point remains.

So have I and I always thought it was dumb and dangerous.

Exaggerated analogy:
Someone will get in a car accident regardless so why not drive while texting and even taking a shot of Cuervo? Life is unpredictable but we increase the odds and make disaster more predictable when we do dumb stuff.

Of course, it's like that commercial where the guy looks over a stone cliff to where he and his siblings used to jump into the below lake. He said "we used to do some dumb stuff back then...."

I'm just adding to the point that I hope DubaiSis was making which is the risk of these things wasn't invented with technology and the Internet. It was documented and publicized with technology and the Internet. This stuff was always potentially dangerous.

/this isn't a disagreement

Yeah I agree, we just didn't HEAR about it. Same thing with pretty much all school shootings, kidnappings, etc.

I'm generally pro-information. I will sign up to have data streamed to my brain in a reasonably safe manner and have it projected onto a contact lens. Put my name on the waiting list. But the sort of freakout that comes from publicizing the 'stupid stuff that kids do' as 'THE NEWEST FAD THAT WILL KILL YOUR CHILDREN/after this message from our sponsor' is one of the downsides of information accessibility.