In my college days, while visiting a friend at Fairfield University in Connecticut, we decided one evening around midnight that we wanted to see the campus from the highest point around, which was the top of a particular administration building. The building was under renovation, and a giant, rickety scaffold embraced one side of the structure. We climbed the scaffolding—with its indiscriminately laid planks and tenuous handholds—and reached the top, taking in the moon-kissed view of nearby Long Island Sound.
If “planking” had been in vogue, as it is now, I might have taken a moment to go to the edge of the roof and lay face down with my arms at my sides, as my friend videotaped the moment to post later on YouTube. Or I might have gone to the edge and attempted to plank—but instead lost my balance and fell to my death, which is what happened this week to 20-year-old Acton Beale in Brisbane, Australia. His death, coupled with a recent arrest for someone planking on a police car, has raised the profile of this fad and caused police in some areas to promise a crackdown; some believe such a crackdown might have dire, unintended consequences.
Beale was Australia’s first reported planking victim, but Brisbane psychologist Paul Martin said that he would not be the last, because risk-takers like Beale—believing, as young people often do, that they’re invincible—are often spurred on by people telling them not to do things.
Australian news website AdelaideNow:
Brisbane psychologist Paul Martin warned of more deaths of “extreme plankers.” He claimed part of the reason was that the pre-frontal cortex in men aged 23 or younger—the decision management part of the brain—was not fully developed and they therefore lacked a “handbrake” and took silly risks.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free“Add testosterone, add masculinity, add the Jackass effect and then add the explosion of social networking sites which are a way to gain acceptance … (and) death is quite inevitable,” [Martin said].
The “Jackass effect” refers to the inclination to mimic the kind of dangerous, death-defying acts associated with the popular MTV show Jackass, which spawned three popular movies. Johnny Knoxville and his crew of professional idiots have always warned viewers not to attempt these stunts at home, but that’s unlikely to dissuade everyone—least of all young “invincible” men—as some people think being a jackass on camera is an easy path to notoriety.
Go to Facebook or YouTube and type in “planking.” You’ll find plenty of pictures, videos and news reports devoted to this popular fad. You’ll see people planking on top of refrigerators, between book shelves, and across their desks at work. It can be harmless and mildly amusing, with people finding all manner of creative (and yes, inane) places to lay down and resemble a plank. But these videos are often rated by viewers according to the level of risk involved. So positing a video of yourself lying face down on your bed is not going to earn you as much street cred as, say, prostrating yourself atop the Statue of Liberty.
No one has planked there yet (as far as I know), but it may just be a matter of time.
The easy, lazy, knee-jerk reaction, though, is to blame this fad on a television show, or on a conduit like YouTube. Adolescent males are predisposed to take risks, to show off for their peers. Just because they can augment the pastime with additional visual proof doesn’t mean the incidents of idiocy have spiked in recent years. As Tara Parker-Pope noted in The New York Times last year,
There are no data to demonstrate whether Web-inspired recklessness is really increasing or whether teenagers are taking the same risks as earlier generations—and just finding it easier to document idiotic exploits for all to see.
Scaling the scaffold at Fairfield University was one of the most reckless things I’ve ever done in my life. But my friend and I loved regaling people with how great the view was from the top of that building, and recounting how crazy it was to climb a rickety scaffold in the middle of the night. Now I look back and think how stupid it was; the “glory” of telling the story wasn’t worth the risk of death.
Some people might see the crackdown on “planking” as the reason to up the ante and do something bolder. Hopefully more people will realize that this fad, while harmless and amusing in certain circumstances, is an avoidable way to die.