Planking: Cleansing Australia of our idiots

Back in 2006, the Lying Down Game was born on Facebook. As with most internet memes, Australia is a few decades behind and it is only recently that the Lying Down Game has caught on under the name of ‘planking’.

With Planking, the basic idea is that you get someone to take a photo of yourself face down with your arms by your side and toes pointed at the ground.

Other than that, there are only four other guidelines to follow;

• More Public the Better
• Larger the Group, the Better
• No location is out of bound when playing the game
• A disregard for personal safety is to be held in higher esteem


Unfortunately as with anything that is open to the general public, in the last few weeks Planking in Australia has seen it’s fair share of idiots. Two particular idiots that have caught the nation’s attention are Simon Hallam and Acton Beale.

Beale died after falling from a seventh story balcony and Hallam is lying in a hospital comatosed after falling off the back of a moving car.

Obviously both men are complete morons and only have themselves to blame… but ask the parents however and it’s all somehow the internet’s fault.

Because y’know, the internet made them do it.

After a Saturday night out drinking on May 14th, Acton Beale returned to an apartment and thought it’d be a good idea to attempt planking off the balcony railing.

Being drunk, he lost his balance and plummeted to his death. No harm, no foul and just another not too bright spark removed from the gene pool.

Well, at least that should of been how it ended. Instead we had the police pleading with the public to not be idiots and even had PrimeMinister Julia Gillard weigh in, describing

the incident as “really tragic”.

“There’s a difference between a harmless bit of fun done somewhere that’s really safe and taking a risk with your life,” she told reporters in Sydney.

“Everybody likes a bit of fun, but focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first.”


Safety sure, but was Beale’s death really tragic? Hardly.

Beale’s death was nothing more than a completely avoidable celebration of stupidy.

Less then a week later, in what appeared to be the second national Planking story, Simon Hallam fell of the back of a moving car whilst allegedly Planking.

For his contribution to the Darwinian hall of fame, Hallam (photo right) is now lying ‘in induced coma in intensive care‘ and ‘may never recover from (his) horrific head injuries‘.

In light of his idiocy Hallam’s father, Terry Hallam, decided it was all the internet’s fault;

The internet and Facebook, they’re just dreadful things … they encourage this sort of behaviour among the young ones, and young ones don’t think about consequences of their actions, they think it’s fun, so they do it with little thought for what could happen – like this.


Yes, the internet and Facebook really are dreadful things. You know what else is dreadful though?

Shitty parenting.

To claim Simon Hallam was nothing more then an impressionable ‘young one’ at age 20 is laughable. Mate, if your 20 year old son doesn’t know that attempting to Plank off the back of a car moving at speed is probably not a good idea then that’s some catastrophic parenting failure right there – the intenet doesn’t have anything to do with it.

To further highlight the stupidity of Simon Hallam’s behaviour, turns out he wasn’t even planking. After reviewing mobile phone footage taken to no doubt impress Hallam’s mates, police are now claiming that he was ‘car surfing’ rather than planking.

Car surfing hey… well I bet the evil internets and Facebook are still responsible for that. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as Simon Hallam being a complete and utter moron now could it.

Meanwhile the planking death/injury craze looks set to continue with reports coming in this morning of three men caught Planking on top of a moving car.

A police spokeswoman told AAP the threesome had been issued with on the spot infringement notices.

The female driver, 20, will face court on June 15, for a dangerous operation of a motor vehicle charge.


Personally I welcome this sort of behaviour. I obviously don’t condone or encourage it, but I find it hard to fault idiots doing the world a favour and eliminating themselves from the gene pool.

I mean cmon, if you need someone to tell you that lying on a balcony railing of a seventh story apartment whilst drunk is a bad idea, or that car surfing off the back of a Commodore is not so smart or lying face down on top of a car with three mates will probably get you killed – it’s probably only a matter of time before you wiped yourself out anyway.

I hope this spate of Planking craziness continues and that there are many more ‘tragedies’ to come. We all need a bit of cheering up every now and then and these morons aren’t going to be missed anytime soon.

Thankfully if the last week is anything to go by, we won’t be running out of them anytime soon. Yay!