When you think about a mob the first association and picture that usually come up your mind is an angry group of people – a violent, aggressive and uncontrollable crowd.
But in times of internet and mobile communication a mob can appear in many different facings: Hundreds or even thousands of mostly young people meeting in public places, acting pacifically, enjoying the furore they created just with their own appearance.
Flash mob is the keyword of this new way to gather in a group – the very mob! But what exactly is that – a flash mob. The easiest way to explain, is to quote from the dictionary. As many new expressions linked to the IT-branch also the term flash mob found its way into the dictionaries surprisingly quick after its first appearance 2003 in New York. “A group of people who organize on the Internet and then quickly assemble in a public place, do something bizarre, and disperse; also called inexplicable mob” so the direct quotation from dictionary.com.
The inventor of the first flash mob, which took place in Manhattan in May 2003, was the journalist and editor Bill Wasik. Via SMS, e-mail or phone Bill Wasik rounded up more than one hundred people in a department store, where they clapped their hands for exact 15 seconds. After that time they left the store without any reaction or explanation for the surprised and perplex employees and customers. Exact these absurdity and purposelessness of the action is emblematic and prototypical for a flash mob. By contrast is the so called smart mob, which I’m going to look at in detail in my second article. Like a flash mob a smart mob is also a convention of people gathered together via interetn, SMS, ect. But there is one big difference between the two: Unlike a flash mob, a smart mob always has a political or socil background and purpose.
One of the most spectacular flash mobs happened during a cold Saturday in January 2006 in New York’s Grand Central Station – one of the biggest train-stations in the world. More than 200 people – all informed by e-mail, SMS or mobile phone – met in the Main Concourse of the station, where they stopped in their move all in the same time for exact five minutes. With disbelief in their eyes all the other pedestrians walked in-between the groups of human-statues. Because the participants of this flash mob acted like frozen bodies, this act became famous as the Frozen Grand Central. Since today this type of flash mob was copied in many different cities all over the world.
Sources:
- wikipedia.org
- youtube.com
- Spiegel.de
- dictionary.reference.com
- improveverywhere.com
