(congregate.act.disperse.)

flash mob (FLASH mawb)n. A large group of people who gather in a usually predetermined location, perform some brief action, and then quickly disperse. ‹v., ‹adj.[link]

Quotes About Flashmobs

"Flash mobs anchor the online world into the real world -- they are a manifestation of your 'cc' list."-Adam, organizer of a London flash mob.[link]

"We're trying to shake people up and say, 'Look, the world doesn't always have to be regimented and we don't always have to be responsible. There's room in our lives for some silliness.'"-Mal Nicholls, Mondo Thingo article[link]

"All flashmobs are political statements. They demonstrate that you can exercise your right to peaceable assembly, that you can witness bizarre behavior without calling John Ashcroft to report possible terrorism, etc. And there are even more overtly political flash mobs....Other political subjects include anti-drug war, anti-California recall, pro-choice mobs, etc. Surprise! Flash mobbers have a liberal streak in them."-Michael D., cheesebikini[link]

"I don't think it needs to 'evolve' to pursue political ends or 'accomplish' anything other than the happiness and fun it provides its participants and its withnesses. For goodness sake, there is scant enough opportunity in society today to show up in a public space, meet 100 new people, share an interesting experience, have fun, and transfer our digital networks into our everyday environments. I understand if someone doesn't want to participate, but stop raining on everyone else's parade. Let us play."-The Other Jane, cheesebikini[link]

"Please don't equate all Americans with our disastrous government leadership, or with the monstrous megacorporations that control that leadership. Flash mobs are the first rumblings of a new power that we hope will bypass those forces and make them irrelevant.

Lion cubs spend a lot of time playing, learning to master their evolving powers. That play seems frivolous at first, but consider the big picture and you might realize that such play is not a waste of time."-Sean of cheesebikini[link]

"Jesus, you people need jobs. You're not fighting any evil corporations here with your flooding of certain venues. You are all nothing but a number -- the sooner you realize that, the sooner your life will become easier and more like a free spirit and full of love and happiness and weed and f*ckin' sh*t."-Anonymous posting, cheesebikini[link]

"This is just the sort of thing that happens when you forbid New York to smoke."-Tobias von Schnebeck, New York Times article[link]

"From what i have read, this seems like a fun thing to do, joining others, meeting people, taking a moment out of your day to just be spontaneous and do something differentŠ..but, to poor people this must cause alot of bitterness and hard feelings. I mean, to people who are working to support their families, or to the people living on the streets, or the traffic jams when people are trying to get to appointments or in a hurry, it just seems like a useless, pointless thing to do. I mean if you are struggling just to find food or shelter you have to wonder what the point is, or why aren't they trying to push a cause with this mobbing. And what is going to happen when some try to abuse the mobs for their own purposes, like covering up killings, robberies, etc? Or what they are gonna do when the violence that usually follows such big crowds happens? Eventually security measures and investigations will occur and if crimes are present then that will be a whole issue in itself and america will waste more money that should go to helpful organisations will be spent on this crap.!! So have fun and don't share any of the responsibility of the consequences when bad things occurŠ"-penny, cheesebikini[link]

"I just want to remind you how potentially powerful and dangerous [flash mobs] can be. Any social organizing method that relies on sophisticated (and often balky) technology is subject to tech failures, infiltration by the powers that be, and PSYOPS/disruption by the authorities. Here in the national security state, better known as the USA, our spooks can read your license plate from a satellite, and open your mail if it contains trigger words, so don't be naive if you think we're flying under the radar.

Encryption, redundancy, careful planning, and a good political/social cause should be prerequisites for such activity, not cowering befoe a mechanical dinosaur at Toys 'R Us."-larue55, cheesebikini[link]

"While it was good for a laugh, as an experiment the Flash Mob seems to be finished. A mob can't appear "inexplicably" while simultaneously courting the media. It's the secret everyone knows."-glowlab news, cheesebikini [link]

Flashmob Sites

• Bill Wasik Interview
• FlockSmart
• Flash mobs go mainstream
• Mondo Thingo Article
• Flash mob Photoblog
• The "Last" Flash Mob
• Video of a well-executed flash mob
• Constructive Flash Mobs
• Sydney Organizing Site

Step 1: Organize.

Methods:

mailing list
• yahoo group
• email contacts
• text messaging
networking site

An organizer is necessary, but that organizer does not play the role of a leader. There is no authority figure, and there could be multiple organizers.

Instructions given include where participants need to be and at what time. Also includes information for locating an individual who will provide a slip of paper with the instructions for the particular flashmob. Digital networking sites such as xFlashmob can send automatic text messages at a given time as well.

Step 2: Congregate.

One needs to blend in with the crowd before the flashmob takes place, and not in that "forced casual" way.

Also, participants need to converge from random directions so as not to create suspicion.

Have mobbers synchronize their watches, timing is KEY. A good website to use is Timeticker

Step 3: Act.

The act itself should not be revealed until flash mobbers get written instruction (or text message) right before the event takes place. It's supposed to be random, and planning ahead diminishes that.

Anyone who does not feel comfortable doing the act they have come to do may just step aside and watch.

Step 4: Disperse.

Leave the area quickly, as if nothing has happened.

Leave in all different directions for the full effect.

Clapping is okay, but the quick dispersal is part of the mob's charm.

If done with friends, leave alone and meet up with them later at a predetermined point.

-adapted from Sydmob.com[link]

A Reflection

Flash mobs, to use a terrible pun, were quite literally a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon. Created by a man known only by "Bill" in summer of 2003, they spread globally with rapid pace and died out almost completely by the winter of that same year. In the summer of 2005, flash mobs officially "sold out" so-to-speak, with Ford's "flash concerts" that promoted their latest model, the Fusion. This past March, Harper's magazine reflected upon the flash mob phenomenon and simultaneously revealed its inventor: Bill Wasik, who just happens to be the senior editor at Harper's.

Wasik revealed that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, an attempt to make fun of hipster culture, and above all a social experiment designed to demonstrate the joining urge of human beings. He planned the lifespan of the flash mob in its entirety, from the first flash mob to its backlash, downfall, and subsequent commercialization. He even helped it progress along his chosen path by providing interviews to every news outlet that asked in the hopes that it would blow up quickly and dissolve just as fast. He was almost completely right about everything, except for the impact of technology. He assumed handing out flyers would have had the same effect as using digital technology. On the contrary, the mob sensation wouldn't have been half as huge if it was even possible to restrict it to paper and physical interaction.

Wasik wanted to satirize hipsters, "those hundreds of thousands of educated young urbanites with strikingly similar tastes. Have so many self-alleged aesthetes ever been moreŠ'submerged in the group?' The hipsters make no pretense to divisions on principle, to forming intellectual or artistic camps; at any given moment, it is the same books, records, films that are judged au courant by all, leading to the curious spectacle of an 'alternative' culture more unanimous than the mainstream it ostensibly opposes. What critical impulse does exist among their number merely causes a favorite to be more readily abandoned, as abandoned it inevitably will be'". As a social psychology/sociology experiment, the results are fascinating. The sheer number of people who joined in on the flash mob craze is astounding, and it is doubtful that even Wasik himself expected how quickly and abundantly the mobs would spread.

While the content of the flash mobs themselves was apolitical (the ones Wasik organized, at least, although they were definitely transformed into political protest by some), the lifespan of the flash mob speaks volumes about digital networking, the nature of the human herding instinct, and the commercialization of everything.

How "Bill" Wanted It

To begin the experiment, Wasik sent a simple email on May 27, 2003 to about 60 friends and acquaintances. The email was vague, forwarded to himself by himself from an unused email address. It asked people to synchronize their watches and meet in a given location in New York. To avoid looking staged, he asked people to approach from different directions based on their birth month. Further instructions were to be given at the site by a random person via a slip of paper. The first mob failed due to the police receiving knowledge about it, but the second, which took place in the rug department of Macy's, was a success.

About 200 people came into Macy's and informed clerks that they were looking for a love rug for their commune that they all lived in. Wired News wrote about it two days later, and the flash mob spread rapidly to other cities. The New York Times, in an effort to have a leg up on the story that other newspapers didn't, predicted (correctly) a backlash to the flash mob sensation. Wasik suspected as much, although the Times had impeccable timing on the story.

Wasik announced that mob #8 would be the last "official new york flash mob" and would occur in early September of 2003. It was hijacked by a man with a neon sign in a briefcase, to which mobbers chanted "peace" and held up their fingers. A fitting end.

The final phase was the commercialization of the flash mob. Summer of 2005, Ford arranged "Fusion Flash concerts" to promote their latest car model which were supposedly in the spirit of the flash mob but were actually a poor butchering of it. Announced a week in advance and covered by multiple radio stations, they didn't really reflect the spirit of the flash mob and failed miserably.

Technology and Manipulation

Although the last flash mob was supposed to happen in September, they continued for many months. The reason they spread and evolved so quickly was due not only to the use of decentralized personal networking technology such as email and text messaging (often referred to as SMS technology- short message system), but because of their coverage by blogs, such as cheesebikini, ginger's blog, and satanslaundromat. Wasik notes that blogs are intimate due to their "inherently arcane content" and that "a mob spread partly by blogs was still, as I had intended, a virtual community made physical." The important thing here is that digital media is unique in that its virtual communities can inspire immediate action. Seeing coverage of a flash mob on television is much different from discussing it on a web forum with a community of likeminded individuals. Unless particularly motivated, one would be far less inclined to form a flash mob on their own than if a group discusses the prospect and logistics together. This in itself does not sound too significant, as flash mobs were never intended to mean anything, but it transfers to more meaningful activities as well. Organizing a subway party isn't going to change the world, but when you replace the content with something substantial, it can have powerful implications. Flash mob coverage by blogs makes them sound particularly enticing because they allow for participants to post pictures and write about the experience, and for readers to share similar experiences.

Another use of technology was the development of organizing networking websites. Sites like Flocksmart and xFlashmobs allow for people to become members, organize flash mobs, search for other planned flash mobs, and discuss them in forums. Flocksmart's search fields include country, organizer, date, and category. The categories listed are political, artistic, fun, and social. xFlashmobs has an extensive list of groups, a photograph feed, and allows for technologically advanced options such as sending preprogrammed messages automatically to event attendees' phones at a certain date and time. This eliminates the previous need for a person to hand out further instructions to flash mob participants upon arrival.

People not only took the flash mob idea and set up their own flash mobs in various cities, but they created subtypes of flash mobs. There are zombie walks, in which people dress as zombies and head through commercial areas, banging on storefronts and walking towards cemeteries; there are subway parties, in which people crowd the subway at rush hour to ease the monotony of the ride home (or annoy the hell out of riders); and there are pillow fights. There are bubble mobs and naked bike rides. Typing in "flash mob" on a photo-searching website such as Flickr yields 4,272 pictures, but typing in "zombie walk" yields 5,426. Flash mobs developed into more than 10-minute-or-less sporadic mobs of random activity. None of these above-mentioned public gatherings have any overt meaning, but they all evolved out of flash mobs.

Wasik commented that "in the media coverage of flash mobs, the most curious undercurrent was the notion, almost a wish, that they would someday become something serious." Should flash mobs have gone/go political? Wasik did not think it would work, but bloggers were emphatic about making the mobs political or artistic. Sean Savage of cheesebikini, the man credited with coining the term "flash mob" saw the mobs as practice for revolution: "Lion cubs spend a lot of time playing, learning to master their evolving powers. That play seems frivolous at first, but consider the big picture and you might realize that such play is not a waste of time." There were explicitly political flash mobs organized, such as a protest in Madrid after a terrorist attack, demanding more information from the government. Using SMS technology, between 3000 and 5000 gathered at the headquarters of Spain's ruling party, and since they were organized in a decentralized manner, could not face legal persecution. There seemed to be a divide between people who thought that flash mobs were supposed to be free of ideology, just a much-needed outlet for silliness, and others who felt that harnessing the ease of mobbing could be useful for protest.

The Big Idea

Flash mobs fizzled out mostly by the end of 2003, but they still go on, political or otherwise. Their importance is in showing how digital technology allows for the rapid spread of ideas and community that can be manifested in the so-called "real" world. Wasik thought that the flash mob could be similarly executed by the use of flyers. Naturally in this day and age, even if the first flash mobs HAD used flyers, someone would have started blogging about it, and the flash mob would have evolved the way it did, using SMS technology. But it also allowed for a greater variety of participants. If someone had handed out flyers, they might have stuck to their biases; people who looked their age, lived in their neighborhood. Virtual communities aided by digital technology allowed for people to come together on the basis of their want to join a flash mob, rather than their similarity to one another. Wasik also assumed they would only be taken up by hipsters, but I doubt that participants were limited to the perpetually hip. Looking at the numerous photos, you can see a huge diversity of people. Flash mobs may be largely history, but the power of digital networking is still evolving.

Note: This project was done for a media studies class in the Fall of 2006. The task was to outline a topic important to digital media.