HOWTO start a flashmob
Here's the latest Instructables HOWTO to tie in with my young adult novel Little Brother, which tells the story of young geeks who use technology to restore liberty to post-9/11 America.
This week, it's HOWTO start a flashmob:
Link
Timing is everything
This refers back to the whole participation thing. If your event is spontaneous in nature and just requires people to show up at the same time and do something goofy(say, gather at a subway stop and follow the first bearded person you see as if they were Jesus), they won't need much time to prepare. The ideal time for this sort of event is at the end of the workday (between 5 and 6PM) during the week as a) the streets are more crowded and b)participants are more available. For whatever reason, Thursdays seem to be most effective.If you are planning something more elaborate, like a Costumed Rampage, you want to give people at least a week to prepare, and preferably two. These events are most effective in heavily populated shopping and tourist areas, so Saturday afternoons work best. Note: these often turn into drunkfests.
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Didn't you know?
Flash Mobs are Tired.
Well, flashing takes a lot of energy.
not really. My chromatophores are pretty efficient
It's kind of sad when you get the same flashmob happening year after year. They're supposed to be surprises, not traditions.
when flash mobs go wrong also worth considering... I type from bittersweet personal experience after having tried to initiate one last xmas in tokyo (they don't seem verily hip to the street action thang here?) anyways... all of 4 people showed up, including thyself... idea was to have folks singing different xmas carols simultaneously... long story short we wandered off after and bumped into a group of mormon carol singers (from salt lake, here on tour and singing in Japanese... kawaii!)
http://www.myspace.com/easterngarbagepatchchoir
when things go wrong... improvise?!
The things that puzzles / fascinates me is, how do you get the word out to exactly the 400 people who don't have anything better to do on that Sunday afternoon, and have the right mix exhibitionism, herd instinct, non-conformism and anti-bourgeois urge.
Who said (and I misquote, as usual) understand twitter, and you understand humanity.
I've started about 13 and people love being part of it, no matter how 2003 it is.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FlashmobUF
The last flash mob I saw knocked down an old man who was walking the same direction. I hope the next flash mob is a bunch of old people beating up young people.
Mobs tend to display mob psychology, which is not normally considered a state of higher brain function. This is not to say that a well-organized march can not be effective.
Reminds me of something that I read somewhere -
"There's nothing more ironic than 20,000 people singing in chorus, 'We don't need no thought control.'"
The initial flashmob is over, but the concept hasn't even started to become interesting.
It's like kids discovering the internet - the first few times they go to message boards or chat rooms and realize that they can get away with being wacky/mischievous, so they do. This is great fun for a little while, the escape from the normal constraints of social interaction. But eventually they get over it. And then realize that message boards and chat rooms are actually /useful/ for things.
So it goes with flashmobs. Everyone needs to go through the phase of goofy mischief as they're introduced to the mind-blowing concept of spontaneous, instant organizing in meatspace. It's the natural and appropriate reaction to the realization that we can organize and interact in this totally new way.
But each person will eventually get over this phase on their own, and will be much better off because of it. They'll then be ready to take their experience of spontaneous organizing and apply it to things that matter.
"Everyone needs to go through the phase of goofy mischief as they're introduced to the mind-blowing concept of spontaneous, instant organizing in meatspace. It's the natural and appropriate reaction to the realization that we can organize and interact in this totally new way."
this kind of thought process is one of the few things that turns me off about this site.
I'm sure there's a performance artist/ham radio enthusiast somewhere who's far more irate.
If there wasn't liberty in America, how could young geeks have the time and the resources and the inclination to do things like randomly follow bearded strangers?
@12, I'm not totally sure I get your complaint, but I think you're saying that flash mobs aren't anything new?
In a sense, you're right - the phone tree has been a tool for rapidly mobilizing a lot of people spontaneously, and it's been around for a long time.
But I can't recall phone trees ever being used to coordinate spontaneous mass convergences. Maybe part of the reason is that until recently, phones were fixed permanently in buildings. So contacting everyone in your phone tree could take many hours, since you didn't have a direct communication channel to /them/, just to their home.
Among certain classes of people, the expectation is now that you can very easily make direct contact with anyone in your social circle at pretty much any time during the day.
Well, that proves it. . . CORY is a terrorist!
Well now, isn't that just "special"? I just watched a television episode of some American cops and robbers show. Robin Williams play a nasty little killer, most unsympathetically. And what is the gimmick? The train station flash-mob freeze scene - as recently covered here.
The television message.
I saw that same Law and Order episode last night... Mo Rocca and Robin Williams were the flash mob ringleaders of a pillow fight and also staged a Grand Central freeze.
Flash-mobbery jumped the shark, y'all.
i saw this post origonally and just recently used a flashmob 2 weeks ago to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkOL0Jr4abg
and this sunday, were doing it again, not at a fast food place tho. somewhere different.
if anyone wants in and lives in LA/OC, email samesamebutdifferent@hush.com
cheers