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A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.
Flash mobs may be organized via
telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
s,
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
, or
viral email
A viral email (also known as a "pass-along email") is an email which rapidly propagates from person to person, generally in a word-of-mouth manner. It is an example of a viral phenomenon, which is used for profit in viral marketing, but can also c ...
s.
The term, coined in 2003, is generally not applied to events and performances organized for the purposes of politics (such as protests),
commercial advertisement
A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...
,
publicity stunts
In marketing, a publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized, or set up by amateurs. Such events are frequently utilize ...
that involve
public relation
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...
firms, or paid professionals.
In these cases of a planned purpose for the social activity in question, the term
smart mob
A smart mob is a group whose coordination and communication abilities have been empowered by digital communication technologies. Smart mobs are particularly known for their ability to mobilize quickly.
The concept was introduced by Howard Rhei ...
s is often applied instead.
The term "
flash rob
A flash rob, also known as a multiple offender crime or flash mob robbery, is an organized form of theft in which a group of participants enter a retail shop or convenience store en masse and steal goods and other items. Typically, store workers a ...
" or "flash mob robberies", a reference to the way flash mobs assemble, has been used to describe a number of robberies and assaults perpetrated suddenly by groups of teenage youth.
Bill Wasik Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine, and self-proclaimed originator of the flash mob.
Biography
Wasik graduated from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1996. He served as Editor of The Weekly Week, and ...
, originator of the first flash mobs, and a number of other commentators have questioned or objected to the usage of "flash mob" to describe criminal acts.
Flash mob has also been featured in some Hollywood movie series, such as ''
Step Up''.
History
First flash mob
The first flash mobs were created in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in 2003, by
Bill Wasik Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine, and self-proclaimed originator of the flash mob.
Biography
Wasik graduated from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1996. He served as Editor of The Weekly Week, and ...
, senior editor of ''
Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
''.
The first attempt was unsuccessful after the targeted retail store was tipped off about the plan for people to gather.
Wasik avoided such problems during the first successful flash mob, which occurred on June 17, 2003, at
Macy's
Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...
department store, by sending participants to preliminary staging areas—in four Manhattan bars—where they received further instructions about the ultimate event and location just before the event began.
More than 130 people converged upon the ninth floor rug department of the store, gathering around an expensive rug. Anyone approached by a sales assistant was advised to say that the gatherers lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York, that they were shopping for a "love rug", and that they made all their purchase decisions as a group. Subsequently, 200 people flooded the lobby and mezzanine of the
Hyatt
Hyatt Hotels Corporation, commonly known as Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, is an American multinational hospitality company headquartered in the Riverside Plaza area of Chicago that manages and franchises luxury and business hotels, resorts, and vacat ...
hotel in synchronized applause for about 15 seconds, and a shoe boutique in
SoHo
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
was invaded by participants pretending to be tourists on a bus trip.
Wasik claimed that he created flash mobs as a
social experiment designed to poke fun at
hipsters and to highlight the cultural atmosphere of
conformity
Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others. People often choo ...
and of wanting to be an insider or part of "the next big thing".
''
The Vancouver Sun
The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published si ...
'' wrote, "It may have backfired on him ...
asik Asik may refer to:
* Aşik
An ashik ( az, aşıq, ; tr, âşık; fa, عاشیق) or ashugh ( hy, աշուղ; ka, აშუღი) is traditionally a singer-poet and bard who accompanies his song—be it a dastan (traditional epic ...
may instead have ended up giving conformity a vehicle that allowed it to appear nonconforming."
In another interview he said "the mobs started as a kind of playful social experiment meant to encourage spontaneity and big gatherings to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could".
Precedents and precursors
In 19th-century
Tasmania
)
, nickname =
, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdi ...
, the term ''flash mob'' was used to describe a subculture consisting of female prisoners, based on the term ''flash language'' for the jargon that these women used. The 19th-century Australian term ''flash mob'' referred to a segment of society, not an event, and showed no other similarities to the modern term ''flash mob'' or the events it describes.
In 1973, the story "
Flash Crowd
"Flash Crowd" is a 1973 English-language novella by science fiction author Larry Niven, one of a series about the social consequence of inventing an instant, practically free displacement booth.
One consequence not foreseen by the builders of t ...
" by
Larry Niven described a concept similar to flash mobs. With the invention of popular and very inexpensive
teleportation
Teleportation is the hypothetical transfer of matter or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction literature and in other popular culture. Teleportation is oft ...
, an argument at a shopping mall—which happens to be covered by a news crew—quickly swells into a riot. In the story, broadcast coverage attracts the attention of other people, who use the widely available technology of the teleportation booth to swarm first that event—thus intensifying the riot—and then other events as they happen. Commenting on the social impact of such mobs, one character (articulating the police view) says, "We call them flash crowds, and we watch for them." In related short stories, they are named as a prime location for illegal activities (such as pickpocketing and looting) to take place.
Lev Grossman suggests that the story title is a source of the term "flash mob".
![Córdoba 2015 10 23 2764 (26152295081)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/C%C3%B3rdoba_2015_10_23_2764_%2826152295081%29.jpg)
Flash mobs began as a form of
performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
.
While they started as an apolitical act, flash mobs may share superficial similarities to political
demonstrations
Demonstration may refer to:
* Demonstration (acting), part of the Brechtian approach to acting
* Demonstration (military), an attack or show of force on a front where a decision is not sought
* Demonstration (political), a political rally or prote ...
. In the 1960s, groups such as the Yippies used street theatre to expose the public to political issues. Flash mobs can be seen as a specialized form of
smart mob
A smart mob is a group whose coordination and communication abilities have been empowered by digital communication technologies. Smart mobs are particularly known for their ability to mobilize quickly.
The concept was introduced by Howard Rhei ...
,
a term and concept proposed by author
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a t ...
in his 2002 book ''
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution''.
Use of the term
The first documented use of the term ''flash mob'' as it is understood today was in 2003 in a blog entry posted in the aftermath of Wasik's event.
The term was inspired by the earlier term ''smart mob''.
Flash mob was added to the 11th edition of the ''
Concise Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Concise Oxford English Dictionary'' (officially titled ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary'' until 2002, and widely abbreviated ''COD'' or ''COED'') is probably the best-known of the 'smaller' Oxford dictionaries. The latest edition contains ...
'' on July 8, 2004, where it noted it as an "unusual and pointless act" separating it from other forms of smart mobs such as types of performance, protests, and other gatherings.
Also recognized noun derivatives are flash mobber and flash mobbing.
''
Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English'' defines ''flash mob'' as "a group of people who organize on the Internet and then quickly assemble in a public place, do something bizarre, and disperse." This definition is consistent with the original use of the term; however, both news media and promoters have subsequently used the term to refer to any form of smart mob, including political protests; a collaborative Internet
denial of service
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...
attack; a collaborative
supercomputing
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
demonstration; and promotional appearances by pop musicians. The press has also used the term ''flash mob'' to refer to a practice in China where groups of shoppers arrange online to meet at a store in order to drive a collective bargain.
Legality
The city of
Brunswick, Germany has stopped flash mobs by strictly enforcing the already existing law of requiring a permit to use any public space for an event. In the United Kingdom, a number of flash mobs have been stopped over concerns for public health and safety. The
British Transport Police have urged flash mob organizers to "refrain from holding such events at railway stations".
Crime
Referred to as ''flash robs'', ''flash mob robberies'', or ''flash robberies'' by the media, crimes organized by teenage youth using social media rose to international notoriety beginning in 2011.
The
National Retail Federation does not classify these crimes as "flash mobs" but rather "multiple offender crimes" that utilize "flash mob tactics".
In a report, the NRF noted, "multiple offender crimes tend to involve groups or gangs of juveniles who already know each other, which does not earn them the term 'flash mob'."
Mark Leary, a professor of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
, said that most "flash mob thuggery" involves crimes of violence that are otherwise ordinary, but are perpetrated suddenly by large, organized groups of people: "What social media adds is the ability to recruit such a large group of people, that individuals who would not rob a store or riot on their own feel freer to misbehave without being identified."
''
HuffPost
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'' raised the question asking if "the media was responsible for stirring things up", and added that in some cases the local authorities did not confirm the use of social media making the "use of the term flash mob questionable".
Amanda Walgrove wrote that criminals involved in such activities don't refer to themselves as "flash mobs", but that this use of the term is nonetheless appropriate.
Dr. Linda Kiltz drew similar parallels between flash robs and the
Occupy Movement
The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of "real democracy" around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and econo ...
stating, "As the use of social media increases, the potential for more flash mobs that are used for political protest and for criminal purposes is likely to increase.".
See also
*
Critical mass
In nuclear engineering, a critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specifically, its nuclear fissi ...
*
Crowd manipulation
Crowd manipulation is the intentional or unwitting use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology to engage, control, or influence the desires of a crowd in order to direct its behavior toward a specific action. This practice is co ...
*
Happening
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
History
Origins
Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...
*
Improv Everywhere
*
Zap
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flash Mob
Culture jamming techniques
Community organizing
Internet memes
Politics and technology
2000s fads and trends
2000s neologisms