Next Great Thing

On a particularly dull day in 2001, actor Charlie Todd decided to go to a bar and pretend to be musician Ben Folds being followed by a group of devoted “fans.” He spent the rest of the night signing autographs for strangers. This was the dawning of the guerrilla theater troupe Improv Everywhere, which was recently tapped to make a pilot for NBC.

Guerrilla theater is a type of improvisational, outdoor display where the audience is generally unaware that they are indeed an audience. These acts can be a social or political commentary, an entertainment act, or a game to pass a jobless actor’s time. A favorite Improv Everywhere display was that of a haunted Halloween subway train a few years back.

This type of theater was the forerunner of what we see today as flash mobs. 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.

Flash mobs are even more popular in Asia. China also has flash mobs of shoppers that will show up at a store and request a group discount. A favorite in Japan is chasing a random businessman down the street. In China and Romania in the past few years, protests were arranged online. The Chinese protest against Japan was one of the few sanctioned by the government in recent years.

A Case Study
The evolution of these mobs was easy for me to observe at my college, BYU in Provo, Utah. The first one I ever saw seemed just for fun. A large group of students got together in the main outdoor courtyard of the school and someone with a roll of extra large brown construction paper ran around the whole group as they made the formation of a ship. The ship was called the “S.S. Friend-Ship.” All of a sudden a group wearing pirate outfits formed their own ship, the “S.S. Relation-Ship.” They battled, and the Relation-Ship destroyed the Friend-Ship. I appreciate a good pun and that one had me rolling.

Recently, there was a lot of controversy when Dick Cheney was planned to speak at graduation this year. Students arranged a silent protest in a courtyard, mainly by way of Facebook. Even an anti-protest protest was planned for supporters. In part because of their efforts, an alternative commencement was scheduled with Ralph Nader and other speakers.

I was able to attend a touching candlelight vigil for the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre that was arranged by just a few people in just a couple of days. That was not a flash mob per se, but a lot of the same online networking was responsible.

Many people think flash mobs are “so 2002,” but as MySpace continues to mesh with real space, these flash mobs could morph into something more meaningful than, say, Flash Mob Zombies.

-MM