Wednesday, 22 June 2011

What a planker! (Insert canned laughter here)

Yo-yo's, Global Hypercolour T-shirts, luminous snapping wristbands. All fads. All shite.

Throughout the ages, various odd practices and items have become famous for five minutes as people latch onto them as the latest craze. Tamagochi, for example, or adding alcohol to beverages, and for a few months it's all you hear about. Dusty middle-aged news reporters in sensible suits talk about them and are encouraged to participate with utterly hilarious results, and normal-thinking folk like myself fail to understand what all the fuss is about and end up crying in confusion.

The latest of these crazes is 'planking' and quite frankly, it's fantastic.

The premise is to lay face-down, arms by your sides, completely still and be photographed. No, that's it. That's all you have to do. Apparently the trick is to do it in as unusual a place as possible, then upload your antics to that Internet for people to look at. Now I've seen and heard of some stupid shit in my time, but this one puts the tin lid on it.

Often, such fads and crazes are easily suffixed with "But what's the point?", but this opens up a new can of pointless wormery. I never fully understood the RickRolling business (linking to Rick Astley footage under the pretence of a genuine link) so I was unlikely to get planking, but where's the fun in it? Where's the prestige? Where's the beef?

At the end of the day, it doesn't appear to be doing any harm (save for a couple of lads who've fallen off balconies for their art) and to be quite honest I couldn't give a shit what today's youth get up to, but it's a poor do when lying perfectly still outside of your local Oddbins passes as entertainment. Give me a diablo and some Pogs any day.

No comments: