If you’re tired of meaningless and potentially dangerous Internet trends, shoeing should leave you downright exhausted.
First there was planking, a fad where young folks would prostrate themselves over an elevated surface. Planking was sadly, the last thing a young man in Australia ever did.
Then there was cone-ing, where people grabbed ice cream from a drive-thru window by the wrong end—a waste of perfectly good ice cream, not to mention brain cells.
A lesser-known trend, owling, involved people perching on high places.
The whole point of these trends, by the way, is to document them and broadcast them on YouTube, Facebook, or other social networks.
So get ready for shoeing: a less risky if arguably sanitary practice sure to chew up your feeds soon.
In order to “shoe” properly, all you have to do is place your shoes on your hands.
The first prominent mention of shoeing came August 3 in a video by YouTube personality Shane Dawson. To date, the video already has more than 800,000 views and more than 23,000 comments, most of which simply repeat the name of the act: “SHOEING.”
The video captures the very moment of shoeing’s creation: Dawson, hanging out with some friends and making fun of the latest Internet trends, decides to come up with a new craze. He asks his friends for ideas. Of those, shoeing is deemed the most acceptable choice.
YouTube was quick to embrace the new idea—especially the notion that “shoeing” mocks the whole notion of imitative trends.
The phenomenon instantly crossed over into the real world. “I was shoeing at Target and someone yelled ‘SHANE DAWSON ROCKS!!!’ :D,” SuperBVBArmy wrote in a comment on response video titled “Shoeing Killed Planking.”
To date, there are dozens of videos with people shoeing. One is a montage featuring a couple different people. Another is a girl wearing her flip-flops on her hands in a supermarket.
COLLEGEAMIGOS calls shoeing “the new thing” in his video “‘Shoeing’ the new planking?” and says “I know, it’s stupid and boring, right? It’s pointless, but that’s the fun in it.”
nobadwriting09 says “shoeing” is “lame” in his video “Planking, Owling, Shoeing?” but finds the fad “kind of cool” because it “lampoons” the other Internet fads. He closes his video with a wise statement: “That’s what the world has come to—us doing stupid things in public, just for Internet lulz,” or kicks.
The Daily Dot has made its own “shoeing” video. Consider it an experiment in participatory community journalism, a shoe-handed salute to Shane Dawson—or the nail in this particular shoe meme.
