Internet Sensation 'Planking' Catches On at Eastern Tech, Kenwood

The Internet has become a place in our modern world where new trends and fads start every day.

Powered by the wide scope of websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, thoese trends and fads can spread throughout the world in a matter of minutes. This is seen particularly often amongst high schoolers, the people who are widely accepted as being the most avid users of the internet and social networking sites.

The latest Internet craze to strike the high schoolers of Essex-Middle River is "planking," an act where a person drops to the ground and lays flat, similar to how a standard wooden plank would sit.

The act became wildly popular in Europe and Australia earlier this year, and has begun to grow in North America in the past month. After taking their planking photos, the "plankers" usually upload the photos to Facebook or a different social networking site.

Eastern Tech students were the first in the area to join the planking revolution, creating a fan page on Facebook called "Eastern Tech's Plank Page" which at time of press is approaching 500 likes and has nearly 100 photos of planks posted. Most of the pictures have been produced by ET students, but there are also various photos of planks from around the world posted, as well as the famous cartoon plank from the 1990s Cartoon Network show "Ed, Ed n Eddy."

Eastern Tech and Kenwood are extremely close in proximity, so Kenwood was naturally abuzz this week with talk of the planking occuring at Tech. Many students had friends at Tech doing planks, and at least 100 Kenwood students "liked" Tech's Facebook plank page. 

Being the adventurous spirit I am, I decided to join in on the planking fun Friday afternoon with a few friends and we shot at least 20 planking photos around Kenwood's school grounds. As a Kenwood student, I have an obvious urge to try to top anything and everything Eastern Tech does.

A skeptic before taking the photos, I discovered that the act was thoroughly enjoyable, and is a great way to have some harmless fun that you can share with friends, family, etc. Shortly thereafter, I uploaded the photos to Facebook and created a "Kenwood Planking" page to illicit some friendly competition with our neighbouring school.

While planking is a fun and harmless activity for the most part, there are documented cases of injuries and deaths while planking. Most notably, an Australian man died by falling seven stories while attempting to plank. So far, no student as either school has attempted a plank that extreme, but the story goes to show that without proper judgment, planking can be dangerous.

With the sudden rise in interest of planking at Eastern Tech, the faculty and administration have obviously noticed planking across their campus, and the student plankers have some concern that their administrators may try to put a stop to their fun.

"I'm thinking they'll come up with some rule to ban it," said Eastern Tech sophomore Trevor Hagy. Hagy expressed dismay that planking may be banned at his school, arguing, "It's just something fun for our kids to do."

A Kenwood junior agrees that planking is good fun. "It's funny." The junior, who preferred not to be named in this article, feels that schools should not ban planking, but that students should be smart while doing it. "It should be allowed, but it should be safe at the same time. It's just another way of expressing yourself."

Currently, the most-liked "Planking" Facebook page is liked by about 262,000 users, and entering "Planking" into a Google search returns more than 10 million web results and nearly 1 million image results.