Overview
If you are the sort of person who enjoys the sport of lying down in random public places in order to confuse people, you may be about to find your calling. This is the approximate description of The Lying Down Game, a movement originally conceived by Englishmen Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon, who were bored one afternoon. To play the Lying Down Game, the palms of your hands must be flat against your side and the tips of your toes pointing towards the grounds; or in other words, look like you're standing up, but face down.
The game is judged in roughly three categories: how public it is, the creativity of the background and the number of people participating - obviously, the more the better. "People generally think you're mad," says Clarkson, "that's sort of the point." In the last few years the game has gone viral, spawned a 104,000-strong Facebook group and become the official post-goal celebration of Accrington Stanley Football Club.
Unlike flash mobbing, the game hasn't yet been colonised by advertising companies and the corporate media, which gives cause to consider it a form of collective performance art on a global scale. The originators describe the game as "parkour for those who can't be arsed," but in many ways the game is the polar opposite of parkour, preoccupied not by inventiveness and expediency of movement, but its complete suspension in the most public of places.
