Planking (Mass Idiocy)
The other day I was on my way to the Starbucks near my apartment when a couple of girls stopped me and asked if I could take their picture. They handed me their camera and took a few steps back to pose. One of the girls was standing behind a Wal-Mart shopping cart and the other girl positioned herself face front across the cart with her head down while trying to remain as stiff as she could, as though she was stacked on top of the cart. In the pantheon of dumb poses, I didn’t think this was the most absurd but it was obviously asinine. Be that as it may, I took the picture they wanted me to take and went about my day. Yesterday I was rummaging through my twitter timeline only to find hundreds of twitpics of people positioned in that very same pose that the two girls from the previous day had asked me to take a picture off. It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on. It was as if planking became the norm overnight.
The very idea that stupidity of this kind can be such a widespread plague within such a short period of time is alarming. I was almost proud of myself for being above the fray of imbeciles that kept tweeting their lives away without so much as an objective regard for how absurd this practice had become. I attempted to have a serious discussion about this fad with a couple of people but I kept being tossed the proverbial “lighten up” phrase that shields people from having to justify their vices.
Acton Beale was a 20 year old Australian kid who fell to his death from a 7 story building who, while under the influence of alcohol, attempted to position himself over a balcony face down pointing his legs up and his arms to his sides.
You might read that statement and think; “well gee, that was dumb. Who would be stupid enough to try that?” Well of course it’s stupid, and I certainly do not need to explain why. Now read this instead:
Acton Beale was a 20 year old Australian kid who fell to his death from a 7 story building who, while under the influence of alcohol, died from a planking accident.
It’s laughable that the interviewee who claims to have introduced Acton Beale to planking would stress that it was drinking that killed him and not planking itself. I suppose this calls for “don’t drink and plank” campaigns to be mobilized for people’s safety. How else are we going to keep the public safe from themselves?
It completely nullifies any humane sense of morality when an avoidable tragedy is cloaked under the label of a fad. People, for lack of a better term, are idiots. As a matter of fact, Acton Beale is an idiot. I have no sympathy for this man, nor am I remorseful. Why should anybody blur the line between common sense and unfiltered stupidity for someone who attempted to straddle themselves on a balcony bar? Does having a name for the action he attempted give carte blanche to those of us who can’t understand why the fad is so popular to begin with? The intellectual people out there who see this story and then advise people to plank with caution are equally stupid. The term is planking. Derived from “wooden plank.” As in to mimic a wooden plank. You are feeble minded vermin if you have been part of this craze.
One would think something devastating must have happened in the world to cause the gap between rational and irrational to grow wider than it already was. Whereas once upon a time stupidity can be accounted for on an individual and case by case basis, now it is as if it’s a virus that spreads with the stroke of a tweet. Then the virus spreads globally until it becomes a worldwide trending topic, and when that happens rational thinking is suspended indefinitely.
I truly believe that people who dismiss this kind of buffoonery with the notion that it’s just a “fad” are dangerously underestimating how much a fad reflects on the intellectual status of a society. Especially one that condones it. That’s the thing about intellect, having too much of it in a cesspool of complacent idiocy is tantamount to concurrence because if reasonable people won’t bother remedying the stupidity that surrounds them, then they must approve of it on some level. Maybe they are right for turning a blind eye. Maybe there is no point in investing any kind of hope for these people. However I am of the belief that if simple-minded people can cause the world to lie face down on the floor and mimic a wooden plank, then certainly one lone sharp mind can inspire the world to accomplish so much more. Planking may be dim-witted, but taking the moral high ground and just allowing the idiots (the virus) to run amuck is the equivalent of intellectual planking.
You think planking is stupid? Well I say those who laugh it off like it’s nothing are equally stupid. The next time you see somebody lying stiff face down on the floor, step on the back of their head and soil their face into the ground. Don’t allow yourself to be engulfed into a craze that is beneath you. In fact, planking is beneath the very people that practice it. These people don’t even deserve to be called planks. Wooden planks are used to build. They are used to build ships, houses, and bridges among other things. The only thing these moronic fools have built is a legion of mindless posers. Literally.
(Source: elmosince87.com)
