Top 10 Facebook Sensations of 2011

Internet and Facebook have seen exponential growth in activities during this year that were considered as sensations, such as planking, owling, plowling, horsemaning, the levitating girl, batmanning, leisure diving, tebowing, teapotting and plumbking.

Planking is an activity consisting of lying face down in an unusual or incongruous location. The hands must touch the sides of the body, and having a photograph of the participant taken and posting it on the Internet is an integral part of the game.

Owling involves sitting or rather crouching in an owl-like posture and the more bizarre or unusual the location, the better it is. It is the art of displaying oneself on top of miscellaneous objects in a sitting position while holding one's knees and staring like an owl.

Plowling is the art of combining planking and owling. A person first lies on top of a random object in the approved plank position, then another person sits on their lower back or legs and assumes the owling position.

Horsemaning, or fake beheading, involves posing as two people so that they appear to be a single body with a detached head. It is a revival of a photography fad popular in the 1920s. If done correctly, horsemaning produces a brilliant optical illusion and allows for more creativity than other photo-posing fads like planking. Also, while planking and owling are solo games, horsemaning encourages social interaction as it requires a partner.

Levitating Girl, dubbed as Tokyo's Levitating Girl, Natsumi Hayashi has photographed herself suspended midair, on city pavements, in restaurants and deserted fields, all over the Japanese capital. She has since become an Internet sensation, with her photos being syndicated by portals across Japan and abroad.

Batmanning involves suspending oneself upside down in a rather awkward location, and is a revival of planking where a person lies down in the most obscure and dangerous places. Batmanning draws its name from the nocturnal mammal which inspired the superhero. To Batman, a peron must hang upside down and hold on only by one's feet from a door, a ledge, or anything for that matter.

Leisure diving is a jump into a body of water or at least something soft, striking a leisure pose in mid-air. During summer, chilling out in mid-air seems to have driven the attention. A photographer captures the moment when the diver has reached peak height above water, when his or her hips are parallel to the waterline. If successful, the result is an airborne Corona commercial, according to the Web site Leisure Dive.

Tebowing is a planking-like phenomenon that began to spread in October 2011. It is an act of mimicking the propensity of the NFL quarterback Tim Tebow by getting down on one knee, resting head in arm and praying, especially praying in a setting where everyone else around is preoccupied with doing something totally unrelated, according to the Daily Mail.

Teapotting is one of the many variations of planking that arose shortly after planking went viral. Teapotting consists of bending the arms into the shape of a teapot, as in the children's song I'm a Little Teapot. This variation was created by teachers in Mortlake College in an attempt to create a new craze after noticing the amount of attention planking received.

Plumbking is a rather recent variation of Batmanning that primarily consists of a person performing a headstand headfirst into a toilet bowl. The person's head is usually seen in the water of the toilet before they assume the standard hands-to-sides rigid planking position, though there are other variations. Most rely on pushing their feet against the ceiling or wall to support their positions. This may have been inspired by a common prank known as a Swirlie, in which one's head is dunked upside down headfirst into a toilet bowl before it is flushed, according to the Daily Mail.