Despite Deaths and Injuries, Internet 'Planking' Fad Continues

[Liberal_in_LA]

Despite Deaths and Injuries, Internet 'Planking' Fad Continues

Planking, the Australian craze of lying face down stiff in often bizarre places for a photo op, claimed another victim when a man was critically injured after being thrown from the roof of a moving car when his planking went bad.

The 20-year-old New South Wales man was in an induced coma after falling head first in Invernell, Channel 9 news reported.

He is still luckier than a Brisbane man who fell to his death from a seventh-floor balcony in a planking stunt on the railings on Sunday.

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"The potential for disaster increases as more and more risks are taken to get the ultimate photo." The obsession started off innocently enough, with plankers targeting landmarks, parked police cars, dishwashers or each other. But they gradually got extreme, with smokestacks, industrial machinery, animals and railway tracks all becoming planking sites.

Despite the accidents, the craze shows no signs of abating.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/20/despite-deaths-injuries-internet-planking-fad-continues/#ixzz1O3uuMcvn

[tridim]

1. Worst. Fad. Ever.

Seriously, WTF? Lying down is not called planking, it's called lying down. I don't get this at all.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. it's not just the lying down, its lying down in freaky places

http://www.plankingphotos.com/?p=308

[tridim]

4. It's still just lying down.

And none of those places are "freaky".

I'm sticking with worst fad ever. Worse than parachute pants.

[mimitabby]

2. I think a modicum of common sense could make all the difference

there's lots of funny places to do this which won't result in death.

[hifiguy]

5. "Fads" like this make one wonder

how we ever managed to outlast the short-faced bears and sabre-toothed cave tigers. There is a deep strain of teh stoopid in humankind and it seems more common now than ever before.

[kestrel91316]

11. We don't have to worry about big predatory animals anymore for the most part,

so boneheaded behavior isn't being removed from the gene pool like it used to.

[aikoaiko]

6. Planking pics make me chuckle.

funny to me.

[Rex]

7. Oh, I thought they were talking about sex.

[Scuba]

8. Darwinism. n/t

[gratuitous]

9. It does seem an effective method for removing defective genetic material

Keep it up, folks! Now, if there was only a way to make tattooing a little more fatal . . .

[City Lights]

10. I had to do a double-take on that lower pic...thought it was Junior at first.

Looks like something he'd be doing.