Planking (fad)

Planking (or the Lying Down Game) is an activity consisting of lying face down—sometimes in an unusual or incongruous location. Both hands must touch the sides of the body. Some players compete to find the most unusual and original location in which to play. The term planking refers to mimicking a wooden plank. Planking can include lying flat on a flat surface, or holding the body flat while it is supported in only some regions, with other parts of the body suspended. Many participants in planking have photographed the activity in unusual locations and have shared such pictures through social media.

Jay-Z and Eminem have referenced planking in their songs "Gotta Have It" for Watch The Throne and single "Rap God" respectively after the practice gained popularity and eventually notoriety from late 2010 to early 2011 in Australia.

A planking-like activity – called face dancing by its participants – was initiated in 1984 in Edmonds, Washington by Scott Amy and Joel Marshall. The two high school age boys were walking in a park when they came upon a baseball game. They decided to lie face down in right field to see if anyone would react.

The first video-recorded occurrence of planking was in 1994 when Tom Green performed a stunt he called "Dead Guy" for a cable TV show, which consisted of Green lying down on an Ottawa sidewalk without moving. Green, who was in an MTV show in the 1990s, is a comedian known for his pranks. He informed CNN about this video evidence and how it did not air on the show, stating that it was “a very obscure piece of video.” Green tweeted “Just found video of me #planking in 1994. I will post it soon. Let people know. :)” on July 12, 2011.

However the video sketch was never aired. So when, in 1997, two bored school boys in Taunton started lying face-down in public places to amuse themselves and baffle onlookers they could not have known of Green's stunt. Gary Clarkson (then aged 15) and Christian Langdon (then aged 12) called it the "lying down game". As Clarkson puts it, "It was just a really stupid, random thing to do."

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Wikipedia