The Society of the Flash Mob

If the summer of love is making its perennial return this year, then whatever happened to the happenings? Well, they too are back, updated for the new millenium, less avant-gardey and conceptual perhaps but nevertheless as epistemologically destabilizing as ever – because flash mobs are the new happenings. NextGreatThing has a good article explaining them. Here’s the gist of it:

Flash mobs are large groups of volunteers, usually assembled online, that meet at a prescribed time and destination to make idiots out of themselves for a brief period of time, and then disperse. Bill Wasik is recognized as the first flash mob organizer. In May of 2003, he arranged 100 people to go to Macy’s and surround an expensive rug, pretending to be hipsters picking out a love rug (because they make all their decisions as a commune, of course).

The largest flash mob to date was in April. 4,000 people turned London’s Victoria Station into an enormous silent dance party by listening to the music of their own iPod and dancing like crazy. Improv Everywhere recently got 225 people to invade a Manhattan Home Depot and at exactly 4:15 start shopping in slow motion for 5 minutes. At 4:25 they froze for another 5 minutes before walking out the door.

xFlashMobs is a site designed to facilitate and organize these events. You can post, create groups, and even send mass text messages to the whole group.

In a way, flash mobs mimic the dynamics of social networking sites. Just like online, anyone can show up and “lurk” on the sidelines. The die-hards jump right in, and the shy ones wait and watch. But while SNS participation decreases as the site grows, it increases as the mob does

We’ve covered flash mobs several times on PSFK but still it’s really quite fascinating what the internet has been able to permit in terms of spur-of-the-moment, wildfire events that take hours to organize and even less time to execute. It’s as though social networking sites, combined with the present generation’s mashup mentality, have created a kind of digital promiscuity which allows these creative instantiations to occur with a facility that was never before thought possible. The society of the flash mob may be here to stay.

NextGreatThing: The Future of Flash Mobs