The Internet craze “planking” made headlines around the world last month when a young man fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Brisbane, Queensland. According to London tabloid the Daily Mail, the man tried to “plank” himself by laying across the balcony railing.
Planking involves participants lying down in unusual places and then uploading pictures of themselves to social networking websites.
Ever since planking claimed it’s first victim, there have been other deaths and serious injuries connected to the fad. What once was strictly isolated to groups of idle middle class teens on Facebook has now reached black Twitter.
Yesterday, “planking” trended on Twitter.com for hours, fueled by tweets containing black Twitter’s version of planking. Socially conscious Twitter users raised the theory that planking is a racist term derived from the African slave trade when shippers stacked slaves on planks in slave ships. But there is no evidence to support their theory that the term originated from the slave trade.