A Quick Word On The Subject of Owling and Planking

Planking started out as something so stupid only idiots were involved. Then, the idiots found out about it and it exploded. It’s everywhere now. NBA stars are doing it. Goddamn Richard Simmons is doing it. It’s reached a critical mass of stupid that hurts the brain of a rational minded human.

I wrote of my (and, really, our) hatred of Planking not too long ago, and, silly me, I thought that would be the last anyone would hear of it. I even thought twice about writing that article, thinking the fad would be here and gone so quickly no one would realize what it was by the time I posted the article 6 hours after I decided to write it. As of today, the planking thing is still going on, and is being threatened by a newer, equally baffling fad known as Owling. It’s when people stand on shit like a bird and take a picture of themselves, presumably so they may stretch their anus muscles for smoother, hassle and strain-free bowel movements.

All of these fads regarding people snapping dull pictures of themselves are all in an effort to see who can make the dumbest things go viral in the shortest amount of time. At this point, the act of taking the picture isn’t the joke. The joke is in conning hundreds or thousands of others in to joining in on your anti-shenanigans – shenanigans so uneventful they can hardly even be considered an event that took place at some point in recorded human history. It’s all one big competition to see who can out do everyone else by creating a worldwide sensation that makes even less sense than the nonsensical stuff that’s already been on the internet for years.

What all of this is doing is blurring the line between people that are trying to be ironic and make a point (however nebulous that point may be), and people that are genuine attention-seeking assholes. According to KnowYourMeme.com, Owling was created as a response to Planking, possibly in an attempt to make fun of it, to point out how dumb it was to popularize something so mundane and lame. But now it has spun wildly out of control, being covered by sites like Huffington Post and Salon, as if it were an actual news story right up there alongside debt ceiling meetings and job numbers.

The point here is, stop. Just stop it. You’re not being funny or original if you’re on the internet one day, see a picture of a person lying face down on a thing or squatting on another thing, then you rush out to your nearest thing that you haven’t seen anyone else laydown on our squat upon, and then you have a picture taken of yourself lying or squatting like a fool. There’s no possible way you can find that entertaining. That’s the kind of entertainment even emotionless, vapid morons would look at with their head cocked slightly to the side, like a dog struggling to understand something it couldn’t possibly ever understand.

Planking, Owling, whatever comes next, from me, and from all of us that may actually be asshole but are trying, really trying hard not to be, I invite you to go f*ck yourself.