For those culture snobs who just don't understand the simple pleasures of planking, a new meme has come along just in time to combat the heat wave suffocating everyone between New York and Kansas: leisure diving.
Inspired by leisuredive.com, a website founded earlier this month by New Yorkers Alex Scott and John Lewis, the leisure dive involves launching one's self into a swimming pool while striking a chill mid-air pose for the camera. What Henri Cartier-Bresson would have no doubt recognized as a "decisive moment."
"The leisure dive speaks to a person who is extreme and yet, relaxed," the site explains to potential horizontal Louganises. And while there are no formal rules to the sport, Lewis and Scott do offer some suggestions to increase the degree of difficulty, including "one raised elbow, a killer leisure face," and "an item that indicates a leisurely attitude” (i.e., a Red Stripe, a White Russian, a James Patterson novel, or a croquet mallet.) The site also promises to post divers' best photographic submissions–so far it features leisure dives from the Hamptons to San Diego.
Unlike planking, which can be done year-round on seemingly any surface, leisure diving does require access to a pool and, ideally, warm weather, which could brand the pastime as slightly elitist.
Then again, unlike planking, it actually seems fun.