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A Mob Scene Just Made for Being There
by Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune
July 24, 2003
FLASH MOB SITES
satanslaundromat.com
moistandtasty.com
smartmobs.com
meetup.com
cheesebikini.com
flocksmart.com
The Internet has spawned a gaggle of new verbs - Googling, surfing and flaming are words most of us are used to hearing in everyday conversation. Now you can add "flash mobbing" to that list. In recent weeks, New Yorkers have been using forwarded e-mails to coordinate "flash mobs," or not-so-random crowds that appear and dissipate within a matter of minutes. Is it performance art? The cutting edge of a new social movement? Or just an easy way to flummox carpet salesmen?
To protect the planned serendipity of each event, participants aren't told exactly what the mob is supposed to do until just before the event happens. For the most recent New York happening on July 2, participants passed around an e-mail telling them to assemble at the food court in Grand Central Station, where organizers (identifiable by the copies of the New York Review of Books they were holding) then gave mobbers printed instructions regarding what to do next. The result: Shortly after 7 p.m., about 200 people suddenly assembled on the mezzanine level of the Grand Hyatt Hotel next to Grand Central Station, applauded loudly for 15 seconds, then left.
The Web site Satan's Laundromat has photos of the mob in action (satan slaundromat.com/sl/archives/000081. html); another site (moistandtas ty.com) has a funny picture of a bewildered hotel guest wondering what he has done to deserve the ovation.
"I can't quite pinpoint the moment the idea came to me, or even why," said the event's organizer, Bill, in an e-mail (Bill says he doesn't want to be identified beyond his first name). "At some point it just occurred to me that it would be funny to create a series of inexplicable mobs [his preferred term]. . . . The idea is that purely through word of mouth, a huge group of people can gather for no reason whatsoever."
SECURITY PEOPLE NERVOUS
"It went off . . . much as you'd imagine, with very nervous security people very nervously scampering about, but never interacting or thinking to ask anyone what was going on," Hyatt mobber David Danzig wrote on his site, www.creamy.com/blog.
Now people around the world want to start their own flash mobs, which is no surprise to Internet guru Howard Rheingold, author of the classic Internet chronicle The Virtual Community. Rheingold has written a new book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, which examines how people around the world are using technology to rewrite the social contract.
According to Rheingold, people have used cell phones, text messaging and the Internet to help a failing candidate win an election in Korea, to organize protests to help bring down Joseph Estrada's government in the Philippines, and to arrange the massive American and European protests that took place before the recent war in Iraq.
"These are all instances of people who are able to collectively organize in the face-to-face world - the real world - more effectively, on a larger scale and at a quicker pace because of the combination of mobile communication and the Internet," said Rheingold, who expands on these themes at his site smartmobs.com.
(Fans of Rheingold's theories have also created a smart mob category at the Internet site that organizes meetings, meetup.com.)
For the second Manhattan event in June, however, serious social purpose wasn't exactly the goal. After gathering in various bars, scores of people suddenly descended on the rug department of Manhattan's flagship Macy's store. Following the organizers' instructions, "We all surrounded one rug and . . . debated the merits of the rug," flash mob participant Quinn Heraty said in a telephone interview. "The salesmen hung out by the register and just kind of watched."
The photo of one hapless rug salesman is priceless; check it out at cheese bikini.com.
"My favorite bit was milling around before the scheduled start times of the mobs and trying to figure out who was there for the mobs and who was just shopping for furniture at Macy's or waiting for a train at Grand Central," participant Mike Epstein wrote in an e-mail. "Some of the people I pegged as definite shoppers or commuters turned out to be there for the mob; it was a very egalitarian assembly, with a real feeling of excitement."
It's not hard to see why organizers would rather remain in the shadows - police showed up at two of the three Manhattan mob events, including the first one at a Claire's Boutique accessories store, though apparently no arrests were made.
"We printed up two sets of instructions and wound up going with plan B at the last minute," Bill said of the recent Hyatt event.
"The original plan was to have a series of small mobs in the main hall at Grand Central, over the course of 10 minutes. I think it would have worked fine, but given the police presence at GCT - and given that there happened to be at least two terrorism scares in NYC earlier that day - we decided that plan B [directing participants to the Hyatt] was the safer bet."
Not surprisingly, it hasn't taken long for the mobbing concept to spread to other cities. One San Francisco flash mob organizer is flock smart.com; Londoners, Bostonians and Chicagoans are also rumored to be putting together impromptu happenings.
And though the events are just meant to be prankish fun, there is a serious side to the flash mobs, at least for some participants. "Honestly, it seems like a way to tweak the nose of those responsible for security, since things have gotten so tense since Sept. 11," flash mobber Eric Longman said via e-mail. "Remember, the First Amendment specifically protects the `right of the people peaceably to assemble.' "
Sean Savage, a San Francisco Web blogger who has been chronicling the trend on his site, cheesebikini.com, sees parallels to anarchic San Francisco groups such the Cacophony Society and the Suicide Club, as well as to that city's holiday tradition of the Santa Rampage, in which odd Santas pop up in various neighborhoods to hand out weird gifts to locals.
Going back further, one can find flash mob forerunners in the Dada and Situationist avant-garde movements, as well as in the "happenings" and collective demonstrations of the '60s.
Getting groups together is easier these days thanks to e-mail, Savage says, but that's only the start. Imagine how simple it will be to assemble a flash mob, he says, when cell phones and handheld computers are equipped with "location aware" technology that will emit a "ping" at the right moment and tell potential mobbers exactly where to go.
INTEREST GROWING
"Until this New York thing, I think it's been a very small segment of society into doing this sort of thing," he says. But the first day he posted information on his site about the New York mobs, he got 9,000 visitors - five times what he normally gets - and he says e-mail from people interested in the concept has been pouring in from all over the globe.
At first, the e-mailers asked Savage how they could get involved with the flash mob movement. "Now a higher percentage of my e-mail is saying, `Hey, we're planning to start one, do you want to hear the details?' " Savage notes.
Of course, not all smart mobs are created with "socially beneficial ends" in mind, as Rheingold notes. He says people in Nigeria used their cell phones to help organize protests against last year's Miss World pageant - protests that turned into riots.
But the New York mobs are, for the most part, doing a good thing, Rheingold says. "This country was founded on balancing security and liberty," he says, "and people are using this means to demonstrate in a harmless manner that it's OK to assemble and have fun."
"It's really stunning to be in the mob as it comes together," Bill wrote, "to see all these people, who up until that very moment seemed unaware of each other, suddenly converge."
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