Now that planking and Tebowing have trickled down through the masses, it’s time for a new photo fad to take the throne.
“Draping” is the latest in a long series of online fads in which people strike an identifiable pose in pictures. In this case, the pose is based on Don Draper’s pose in the opening credits of AMC’s “Mad Men.”
In the pose, Draper reclines on a couch with his right hand draped over the couch’s back with a cigarette hanging between his fingers.
According to KnowYourMeme.com, a site dedicated to chronicling online trends, Draping began on the Tumblr page “#Draping” in early February with a picture of a man performing the pose in front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
The site now hosts hundreds of user-created pictures of people, babies and even dogs Draping in suits, with liquor and in front of famous landmarks.
Trevor Gourley, writer for The Big Orange Slide marketing blog, speculated that the original Tumblr page was created by AMC itself as part of a viral marketing campaign ahead of the premiere of the fifth season of “Mad Men.”
Gourley derided the “flimsy, uncreative idea behind the ‘memes'” and what he called the “Astroturf (read: fake grassroots) initiatives” behind them in a recent blog entry. Gourley also wrote that mainstream marketers are attempting to forcibly create trends by recycling old ones that have run their course.
Between Monday and Wednesday, the hashtag “#Draping” was tweeted more than 3,000 times, and 125 photos of Drapers were added to the Draping Tumblr site.
Brian Duplantier, a freshman nursing student who is a fan of “Mad Men,” said the appeal of Draping is the same as that of the show.
“[‘Mad Men’] is a lot different than most of the shows you see on TV,” Duplantier said. “And Draping is definitely a lot classier than planking.”
 
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Contact Gordon Brillon at [email protected]