Roger Moroney: Plankers just modern day streakers

The thing about the internet, and its growing spread of social sites, is that they have effectively taken the place of stages.
You can sing or play a song, up in a tree if you like, or you can dance amidst traffic or get your cat to sit on a toilet seat and make rude noises to accompany the sight as you film it.
Then, without the need to hire a cinema or enlist the assistance of ticket sellers, ushers and projectionists, you can send the performance out into the great ether of the internet for everyone to see.
The encouragement to do so is the knowledge that some "contributors" have gone on to taste wealth and fame as a result of their efforts.
I guess all it takes is one producer or talent scout to spot something slightly extraordinary and the rest is showbiz history ... although in most cases the fame and fortune lasts about a fortnight.
Because something else always comes along.
So the creators of these unsolicited acts tend to move into "oneupmanship" mode and push the boundaries just a little bit further.
That's when it either gets offensive ... or dangerous.
I have seen, and cringed at, a couple of terrifying skateboard stunts, one of which resulted in one of the boarders nailing himself into the side of a bus.
He staggered away, though, and is probably now signing a contract to appear with the Jackass team in their next movie.
It's an old cliche but it's probably true ... kids like to get attention.
Armed with nothing more than the ubiquitous cellphone or miniature digi-camera, the young movie-makers embark on the latest craze (something usually brought about by boredom I suspect) and film and post their efforts.
Back in the early '70s there was a thing called streaking. It went global.
There was not a concert or sports match that was not immune from being invaded by a fast-moving naked person.
But not always fast-moving.
I remember coming out of the old State Theatre in Napier on a Friday night around 1972. There was a commotion up Dickens St. People were yelling and whistling.
Then he appeared.
A bloke, completely starkers, running quickly down the road.
To his credit he was keeping to the left and was mindful of the traffic. Then, to cheers and laughter, he stopped at the intersection because the traffic lights had turned red. He jogged on the spot until they went green then resumed his journey ... never to be seen again.
Except possibly in court the following Wednesday, although it wasn't too offensive as it was a very chilly night.
I am only thankful there was no You-Tube running back then ... and equally thankful that the fad of streaking has pretty well disappeared.
Try it at a sports ground now and you'll never get back in there again ... ever.
Last year the big craze was coning.
Grabbing a big orange warning cone and putting it somewhere it shouldn't be.
Which effectively meant the coner had to defy both danger and the law to put their ill-gotten cones on everything from the heads of large statues to, in one case, the wing of a parked-up passenger aircraft.
And yes, some of the results (and some were quite remarkable) ended up on the internet.
I think one from the US was taken in a high security prison ... how they got a cone in there is anyone's guess.
Now, as we tick off the half-way mark to 2011, it is a thing called planking.
One website describes it as "spreading faster than swine flu".
There are posted pictures of people horizontally stretched out on bookshelves, rubbish bins, clothelines, large boulders, a carton of beer, an accordion, large signs, escalators ... there's even a shot of a bloke stretched out across the humps of two resting camels.
I give them top marks for imagination, and as long as they don't do anything too crazy or dangerous then I have no problem with it. But you know how it is ... it just takes one. Like the bozo who decided to plank across railway lines and had a shot taken as a train was arriving in the background. Dumb.
Some schools are warning their pupils about it and the Aussie Prime Minister Julia Gillard has voiced her concerns, which isn't surprising given a 20-year-old Queensland lad decided to plank on a balcony railing ... and fell seven storeys to his death.
John Key has said it's fine by him (after he was photographed with his lad safely planking across a chair) but just as long as kids are sensible and careful about it.
Which I agree with.
However ... kids and the words "sensible" and "careful" just don't always go together.
So anyway, give it another couple of weeks and the YouTube army will be asking ... what's next?
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.