Why is everyone planking

To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In. Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership. Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. Please click confirm to resume now. Most Popular News. This is planking, described variously as a global participatory art project, the lazy man's free-running, a "pointless internet craze", the new flash-mobbing and, in the words of one incensed online commenter, "a sick, pagan pastime".

It has been a busy week for the plankers, in which they have suffered their first casualty, gained , converts and prompted a statement from the Australian prime minister. In the early hours of Sunday morning, year-old Australian Acton Beale fell seven storeys to his death from the balcony of an apartment block in Kangaroo Point, Brisbane.

He and a friend had been performing planks on their journey home from a night on the town. The planking craze had only truly exploded in Australia two days earlier, when police arrested another young man for planking on the hood of an unoccupied police car.

Nate Shaw, a year-old, pointed out that he had done no damage and hurt no one, but was nonetheless charged with being found — quite literally — on police property without excuse. The arrest made headlines, and the Planking Australia Facebook page grew almost overnight from 8, fans to well over , Quizzed about the dangers of this strange new craze yesterday, prime minister Julia Gillard told reporters: , "There's a difference between a harmless bit of fun done somewhere that's really safe and taking a risk with your life.

Everybody likes a bit of fun, but the focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first. Dedicated hipsters will have heard of planking years ago. Though it is now biggest in Australia, it is an English — some would say, quintessentially English — creation. It began 14 years ago with a pair of bored kids. Gary Clarkson, then 15, and his friend Christian Langdon, 12, would perform the plank in public places, amusing one another and baffling onlookers.

Back then, it was known simply as the Lying Down Game. A superior had spotted the pictures after they had been posted to Facebook. Plankers say the activity is generally harmless fun -- though that idea was challenged last week. Some even refer to it, tongue-in-cheek, as a type of alternative sport. The game hasn't won over everyone, and those opposed are especially vocal. A bunch of anti-planking pages have sprung up on Facebook. Others are just offended that the media circus has plucked their hobby from obscurity.

Steve Molk, a radio personality in Brisbane, Australia, declares that planking has "jumped the shark. Share this on:.