Bill Wasik is the editorial director of

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

, and self-proclaimed originator of the

flash mob 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 t ...

Biography

Wasik graduated from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1996.''Mob Mentality'', Emily Boutilier, Amherst Magazine, Winter 2015
/ref> He served as Editor of The Weekly Week, and contributed to

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. Initially publishing the literary journal'' Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', the company has moved to ...

. He was a senior editor both at Harper's Magazine and

Wired Magazine ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fr ...

before becoming deputy editor of

Flash mob inventor

"For years he was 'Bill'—no last name—who cryptically told reporters he worked 'in the culture industry,'” wrote Emily Boutilier in the Winter 2015 edition of the Amherst alumni magazine. Yet in 2003, he claims, he was the originator of the first

. Three years later he "revealed himself as the inventor" in an eleven-part series in Harper's, having anonymously organized the first recognized examples in New York City during the summer of 2003. Wasik said in 2010 that he was surprised by the violence of some of the gatherings. He said the mobs started as a kind of playful

social experiment A social experiment is a type of psychological or sociological research for testing people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the point of v ...

meant to encourage spontaneity and big gatherings to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could. “It’s terrible that these Philly mobs have turned violent,” he said."Mobs Are Born as Word Grows by Text Message", ''New York Times''
/ref>

Works

Wasik is the author of 2 books, his first being ''And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture'' (Viking, 2009) and, with Monica Murphy, ''Rabid'' (Viking), which was shortlisted for the 2013 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His second book is Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus, with Monica Murphy as co-writer (Viking, 2012). He is also the editor, with Roger D. Hodge, of ''Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper's Magazine'' (New Press, 2008)

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American magazine editors {{US-editor-stub