Planking and Tebowing were two of the earliest online social media memes, in which people would photograph themselves lying flat in a conspicuous location or imitating former Denver Bronco Tim Tebow's post-game prayer and post it online. Since then, there have been too many memes to count, some of which most people will probably have never heard of, such as Vadering, Owling, and Fridging. Most of them are short-lived like the Harlem Shake, which only lasted for about two weeks, but they generate mass appeal and everyone gets in on it, posting videos of themselves doing it much like the Miami Heat and even members of the United States Armed Forces did.

Vine offers the following definition on its increasingly popular #whaling page: "whal·ing: To dive backwards with one's body in a public or unusual place like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean." You can go to the page yourself to check out some of the videos. It's not exactly clear how the meme got started but one of the earliest videos showed a group of lawyers and scientists #whaling around their office workplace and was posted to Upworthy here.

The video was seemingly designed by the Natural Resources Defense Council to spread consciousness about the plight of the peaceful whales from fishing and military naval testing and to support marine mammal and ocean advocacy groups. It's not certain whether they came up with the meme to spread awareness or simply jumped on the bandwagon once the meme started catching on because it was relevant to their agenda. Either way, you decide after watching the video, which includes a voiceover with quotes like "Behold the gray whale in its native habitat. It's spring now and virile males are traveling through verdant and vital marine protected areas in search of the coy, loving embrace of a female gray whale."