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Create an instant mob
INTERNET has certainly provided us with new ways to do old things — be it listening to music, chatting or lately, arranging instant gatherings using instant messages, also known as called Flash Mobs.
The idea (nothing to do with Macromedia) is very simple — an organizer uses his online contact-list to spread a message, relying on each contact to pass on the word to subsequent contacts. Ultimately, all the contacts appear at a predefined place and at a predefined time — an instant mob is created!
Mobs are characterized by what they do, rather perform as the idea is seen by some as part of the performing arts. Organizers don’t merely outline the venue of gathering but also the choreography plan. In New York, a mob recently gathered at a hotel balcony for a 15-second spell of loud applause. Not sure what the gathering was about, police swarmed the area but since it was a flash mob, it got dispersed within minutes.
The concept is attractive for masses who think that internet has mechanized people’s life to an extent that real-time face-to-face communications has become a rarity. The time it takes to materialize this dream has now been reduced to minutes, even to seconds at times. One of the active Flash Mob organizers in New York is Mr Bill (code name) who terms his hotel frenzy as “fabulous”, adding that as long as such events are kept brief and covert, problems can’t arise.
Rob Zazueta is one of the famous organizers of Flash Mobs in San Francisco. Emphasizing the need of human interaction, Zazueta is convinced that no matter how techy we get, the concept of “online community” will eventually take us back to “offline community” — virtual links making possible real links.
“I think we’re always going to need some real face time with folks” is the bottom line. The guy has recently developed a website dedicated to Flash Mobs
Not all mobs are “just silly” — some are “artistic” in their category assignment. For instance, in one event in Toronto (Aug 10; you missed it!) the organizers requested the participants to bring in pen and pencil to sketch other participants. This event was organized in the afternoon and participants were asked to spare some time out of their lunch breaks to attend a virturally organized real-world gathering.
Another interesting instance of an “artisitic” mob (same day) was seen in Chicago. Organized at 01:30pm, mobsters had to bring in their favourite colour chalk to draw smiley faces on the pavement of parking lots.
A good score of international news agencies have been carrying reports on Flash Mobs with great interest. ABCNews, CNN, Toronto Star, SkyNews, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, etc., have all run their reports about the phenomena.
They weren’t chanting or protesting, and Godzilla was nowhere in sight. So what brought a mob of more than 200 New Yorkers to an upscale Soho shoe store Wednesday evening?
One member’s rationale: “Humour. Pure humour.”
The “Flash Mob” was the fourth in Manhattan in the past several weeks, and was organized through email and the internet. The objective was to have a large mass of people converge on a location for as little as 15 seconds or as long as 15 minutes! The event had participants involved in all sorts of fun activities such as fulfill a requested task or act out a scene, and quickly go away.
When such events are conducted the participants receive detailed instructions through email prior to the event which informs them about the venue of meeting and other instruction regarding the time and activities.
“You synchronize your watch (with the US Atomic Clock), and I’m like half a second off, and then you go for it,” one woman explained. “You come here at 7:00, depart at 7:18, and you’re there by 7:23. It’s so silly!”
Most of the crowd seemed to be young, hip, middle-class New Yorkers. But during the short five minutes the mob was in the shoe store, the instruction sheet told them: “You are on a bus tour from Maryland. You are excited but also bewildered. It is as if the shoes were made in outer space.”
Flash Mobs are also planned for Minneapolis and upstate New York. One has already taken place in Austin, Texas.
Bill, who prefers to be identified by his first name only, came up with the idea for the “inexplicable Flash Mob.” He’s not directly involved in any mobs other than the one in Manhattan, but he’s excited that people around the country are adapting his idea.
“It’s such a simple idea, and I hope that if people think it’s fun to do in their own city, then yeah, do it,” he says. “I’m really surprised but pleased that it’s spread so far and wide.”
“The idea is to work out different possibilities about the way New York and a mob can interact and have a good time together,” says Bill.
Flash mobs are performance art projects involving large groups of people. Mobilized by email, a mob suddenly materializes in a public place, acts out according to some loose instructions, and then melts away as quickly as it formed.
According to USA Today, “Flash mobs” stage wacky public stunts. The phenomenon, called smart flocking by some, is spreading across the globe along with the portable digital devices that enable it.
After the original Flash Mob coalesced in Manhattan less than two months ago, similar 21st century be-ins were staged from Minneapolis to Tokyo to Vienna.
In Rome, hundreds flooded a bookstore, asking employees for imaginary books and authors.
“Everything makes a lot of sense nowadays, a bit too much sense. Then, for 10 minutes, you get to do something completely nonsensical. You get to be a kid for a few minutes,” said a 30-year-old organizer of the San Francisco mob, who wanted to be known only as “The Governor.”
A Flash Mob is a lighthearted variation of the “smart mob” — people who use digital technology to hastily mobilize, as activists did to protest the US invasion of Iraq or cell phone-equipped teenagers simply do to organize their evening on the spur of the moment.
Futurist Howard Rheingold unwittingly inspired the flash-mobbers, with his 2002 book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, which examines how technology redefines social interaction.
The writer
