A pillow fight flash mob is a social phenomenon of flash mobbing and shares many characteristics of a culture jam. The flash mob version of massive pillow fights is distinguished by the fact that nearly all of the promotion is Internet-based. These events occur around the world, some taking the name Pillow Fight Club, a reference to '' Fight Club'' by

Chuck Palahniuk Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (; born February 21, 1962) is an American freelance journalist and novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adul ...

in which anyone could join and fight as long as they fought by the rules. Both the

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and

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Pillow Fight Club's rules reflect that described in the book and feature film. The trend owes much to uses of modern communications technologies, including

decentralised Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

personal networking, known as smartmobbing. Word of the events spreads primarily via digital means, usually on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

via

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, chat rooms and text messaging which result in seemingly spontaneous mass gatherings. Pillows are sometimes hidden and at the exact pre-arranged time or the sound of a whistle, the pillow fighters pull out their pillows and commence pillow fighting. The pillow fights can last from a few

minute The minute is a unit of time usually equal to (the first sexagesimal fraction) of an hour, or 60 seconds. In the UTC time standard, a minute on rare occasions has 61 seconds, a consequence of leap seconds (there is a provision to insert a nega ...

s to several hours.

Pillow Fight Day

The largest pillow fight flash mob was the Worldwide Pillow Fight Day (or International Pillow Fight Day) that took place on March 22, 2008. Over 25 cities around the globe participated in the first "international flash mob", which was the world's largest flash mob to date. According to ''

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'', more than 5,000 participated in

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, overtaking

's 2006

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gathering as the largest recorded flash mob. Word spread via social networking sites, including

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, Myspace, private

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, public forums, personal websites, as well as by word of mouth, text messaging, and email. Participating cities included

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, Pécs,

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, Szombathely,

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, and Zurich.

Origins

While ordinary pillow fights have existed for a long time, these events are massive in scale, occur in public and are promoted primarily via the internet. Many massive pillow fights have been organized in an effort to break

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

, but the current record is a pillow fight among 7,861 people achieved by MyPillow, Inc. (USA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 18 May 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pillow Fight Flash Mob Culture jamming Flash mob Pillow fight Articles containing video clips ru:Бой подушками#Флешмобы