A brief history of Flash mobs

Originally intended as a joke on stupid hipsters, co-opted by advertising men, and to many observers completely pointless, the Flash Mob seems to be one form of silliness that will not die. Typically it involves somebody posting on a website "let's meet at X and do Y" where X is a public space and Y is something very crazy.

Early flash mobs involved pestering sales assistants or random street performance, but there are also subgenres like pillow fight flash mob, flash mob bang, and mobile clubbing. It also links to more political phenomena like guerrilla gardening and guerrilla knitting. And even more bizarre ideas appear: "we thought we'd try a 'flash-mob' cataloging party! A bunch of LibraryThing members show up with laptops and barcode scanners in hand and see how fast we can enter an entire library into LibraryThing." (Dutch library website)

Arguments

Pro: Thomas Kerrigan, commenting on article, London Evening Standard:

I love the whole concept of flash mobs. The anonymous nature, the spontaneity of hundreds of people suddenly coming together, becoming united for a brief moment where otherwise people pass each other by in silence. It offers everyone a unique story to tell loved ones about a break in humdrum routine.

Anti: Author James Harkin (Cyburbia, Adam Curtis's The Trap, Director of Talks at the ICA in London):

'Why not turn up at Grand Central Station wearing underpants in a big Flash Mob?' But I don't think 'Why Not?' is good enough. Things need to have a purpose. If you have a project or a purpose, you can use the medium to achieve that. With no ideas, no project, you have nothing. The evangelists simply believe can use this metaphysical glow of this medium to woo people. People forget the world's first Flash Mob in 2003, organised by Bill Wasik, was a joke. It was a joke on the gullibility of New York hipsters who would react to any kind of electronic information, and do anything you told them. What's fascinating is that the 'Why Not?' ethos of Web 2.0 people started as a joke against them.

Rather than decide on its merits here is a...

Flash Mob time-line

Prehistory: Protestors at the G8 conference in Seattle in 1999 made extensive use of websites and internet technology to rapidly organise demos. Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution was published in 2002, a year before the first flash mob. In one scene in Terry Gilliam movie The Fisher King (1991) everyone in Grand Central Station spontaneously starts ballroom dancing for no reason. Wikipedia also points to Larry Niven's 1973 story "Flash Crowd", while Ray Bradbury's 1943 story "The Crowd" describes a group of people who appear with suspicious speed around accident scenes. Flash mobs are also perhaps connected to the ancient joke of standing in the street pointing at something non-existent, which can reputedly attract a large crowd also pointing and pretending to see what you are pointing at.

May 2003: Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper's Magazine, organises the first flash mob. "I created an email address - themobproject@yahoo.com - and forwarded an email to myself, and then I forwarded it to about forty or fifty friends on the premise that they would think, 'Oh, Bill's heard about this interesting thing.'" Planned for the street outside Claire's Accessories, Astor Place, New York City, they fail to go through with it due to a police presence nearby. (Stay Free)

3 June 2003: In the second mob organised by Wasik, the first successful flash mob, 100 people gather in the rug department of Macy's, New York City, confusing sales assistants with bizarre questions.

24 July 2003: First European flash mob, in Rome: members enter a shop and ask for non-existent titles. (CNN)

7-8 August 2003: Mobs planned for Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Zurich and Vienna. In Berlin on the 7th "about 40 people in the middle of a busy street took out their mobile phones and shouted, 'yes, yes!' and then applauded". (CNN)

3 April 2004: First computing flash mob at University of San Francisco, an attempt to get lots of people to bring computers to create a temporary supercomputer. (Flash Mob Computing)

6.53pm, 4 April 2007: Over 4000 people attend a silent disco at Victoria Station, London, the largest event in Britain up to that point, which lasted 2 hours. This is one of a number of events organised by artists Ben Cummins and Emma Davis, in which people arrive at a venue and dance to music on their headphones. The silent disco phenomenon also enjoys brief popularity in clubs and at music festivals. (Evening Standard)

Summer 2007: The world is gripped with flash mob water fight fever, with events in Leeds, Vancouver, London, and many other places. (Daily Mail; Channel 4; Vancouver Sun)

25 May 2007: Zombie flash mob, San Francisco. (cnet)

5 August 2007: First Chinese flash mob, with 14 people gathering to sing songs in the street in Changchun, Jilin province. (china.org)

22 March 2008: Possibly the largest flash mob ever is the New York event of Worldwide Pillow Fight day.

27 March 2008: Flash mob protesting against Heathrow Terminal 5, London. (T5FlashMob)

5 May 2008: A flash mob water fight in Leeds causes thousands of pounds worth of damage. A similar event was held without incident in the city on 5 May 2007. (The Register)

15 January 2009: T-Mobile stage a fake flash mob in London's Liverpool Street station for use in a mobile phone commercial.

7.00pm, 6 February 2009: A flash mob is held in Liverpool Street station in tribute to the T-Mobile advertisement. One participant says "The T-Mobile advert was brilliant and I thought it would be really fun to join so many other people just to dance." (Daily Telegraph)

1 March 2009: Flash mob of plasticine figures mourning TV presenter Tony Hart, outside Tate Modern, London. (BBC)

6pm, 26 June 2009: Mass moonwalk at Liverpool Street station, London, in tribute to Michael Jackson who died the previous day. (B3ta)

Additional data from the internet version of the flash mob, Wikipedia.