When it comes to pushing an absurd idea to the limits, you can always count on the Internet.
A few years ago, we saw the development of “planking.” Ramrod straight, with their arms stretched along their bodies and their face against the ground, people photographed themselves “planking” in various public places across the world and posted them on the Internet. Sites gathered the most ridiculous images, offering advice for prospective plankers. Want to plank between two camels, on a telephone booth or even a tank? The choice is yours!
Lacking any inhibitions whatsoever in my love for photography, I decided to try planking out for myself. One rainy Sunday afternoon, I headed to the park behind my house to prepare my future moment of glory 2.0. Who would have thought that this web silliness required such abs? It turns out that planking is as much athletic as it is photographic. I give up.
People are still out there planking, but a new viral oddity has arrived: Breaded Cats—that is, pictures of cats with their head poking through a slice of bread. Dressing up your cat like a lion with a bread mane has become a serious trend, and Internet sites have begun to catalog the best pictures. It’s like a large beauty contest sponsored by some industrial baking company. This, too, is perplexing, but there’s more…
In fact, bread is having a great year on the Internet, because the latest internet phenomenon is “baguetting.” Replace a baguette with an everyday object and take a picture. The blog behind the trend is Baguette-me-nots (http://baguettemenots.tumblr.com), created by Tim Bierbaum and John Miliser. These two American are paying a moving tribute to our national baguette by proving it can take the place of anything: a baguette-tie, a baguette-bottle-of-champagne, a baguette-tennis-racket. Soon we’ll have the baguette-camera, to photograph people baguetting.
Pauline Auzou
