“Planking,” or the act of lying face down for a photo op in weird and wonderful places, has actually been around for a number of years. It carried on largely unnoticed until recently, gaining popularity in Australia and New Zealand. Since then it has rapidly become the latest Internet craze.
Dedicated Web sites have been springing up online and newspapers have been awash with stories of young people planking in ever more bizarre and dangerous locations.
The young people of Taiwan have also jumped on the bandwagon, with Reuters recently running a feature on Karren and Jinyu — two Taipei women who have made a name for themselves “planking” around Taiwan — that was picked up by newspapers around the world.