Image source

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world.
Picture yourself in a public place. For example, at your local railway station. Nothing special is happening, other than the fact that there seem to be a lot more people around than usual.
Everybody is going about their business, either coming or going.

All of a sudden more than half of the people freeze as still as statues.

What’s going on – has somebody thrown a magic boomerang and time has stopped for them, but not for you?

 It appears so; they don’t even flinch when you poke them. By the time that you have tried to figure out what is going on, they are off, moving about again. Now you’re the one that is standing still, with your mouth open like a fish; thinking “what the ….”

Take a look at it actually happening:

Grand Central Station (207 people)

Well, that’s what is known as a “flashmob” event.

This is the latest craze spreading around the world where people, (and the number can be up in the thousands) arrange to meet at a particular venue at a particular time to “punk” or surprise the general public.

Years ago it would have been impossible to arrange such an event surreptitiously.

Now with the internet it’s the easiest thing in the world.

There are sites set up such as Flashmob.com, where people arrange and announce the events that they are lining up. The social networking sites are also another source available to get the “mob” together. In fact in its, online version, article on February 9th 2009 the UK newspaper The Telegraph.co.uk specifically named Facebook:

“One of London’s largest railway stations was forced to close after 13,000 people congregated to mimic a mobile phone advert” (T Mobile)“in an event publicised on Facebook.

Liverpool Street Station was overrun by dancers who had congregated on the concourse for a silent disco, organised via the social networking website.
The crowd, who were all listening to music through headphones, broke into dance at 7pm on Friday night in a scene which aped the advert which was filmed at the station last month”

In actual fact The Telegraph sort of got it right and wrong, about the T Mobile advert, because a clever person in T Mobile’s advertising had spotted the potential of an existing trend and used it. Somebody, from the street, had then taken the initiative to organise a flashmob rerun of the ad. Also, a similar event had taken place at Liverpool Street station and other venues previously.

It must look manic because everybody is listening to their own choice of music, with different beats and rhythms, through headphones connected to their iPod or some other mobile music source. Hence the events are called “mobile clubbing” or as the Telegraph rightly and datedly says, “Silent disco”.

The events take many different forms. As well as the two already mentioned, popular ones are “pillow fights” as shown here in “downtown” Toronto:

Image source

Although I’ve certainly found records of them being carried out in New York, Trafalgar Square in London and Switzerland.

(The picture I really want show is a “cracker” it’s from Switzerland; showing a field of white feathers during a “pillow Fight” event. This publisher would have a siezure if I offered it for publication here because some of its copyright legislation is covered by a separate French agreement. So if you don’t click on anything else here – apart from all the adverts obviously – click on this picture link)

One of the most popular events seems to be of everybody turning up as a “zombie” and making their way to a central location to crease the locals up, in either fear or laughter.

Screenshot by the author

You Tube carries videos of this type of event taking place in such places as Perth and Canberra in Australia, Poznay in Poland and in the US in San Francisco and at an A & M store in Texas.

In May 2007 cnet carried the following story of one such event:

“It was difficult to judge the exact number of zombies that shuffled through the city’s shopping district, losing limbs, blood, and unmentionable body parts along the way, but probably at least 150 converged on Union Square. Then they decided to visit nearby businesses, including the Apple store, Nordstrom, the Disney store, and the Westfield Mall.

The event was titled “SF Zombie Mob 2007,” and it was organized by the gruesome-minded folks at eatbrains.com.”

In Vancouver there was even a bubble blowing event. Everybody got together and simply filled the air with bubbles.

Image source. Thanks to Dustin for allowing me to use this picture.

Another popular one is the “finger-gun fight”, where the participants appear in the most inappropriate place such as the Tate Picture Gallery in London as tourists or art lovers, then start “shooting” each other and all end up “dead” on the floor. This is then followed by them jumping up and making a quick exit.

This really does remind me of some of the stunts that the graffiti artist Banksy played on art galleries and museums by sneaking his own humorous art in and putting it on display (“Banksy Punked Paris Hilton: Cunning Stunts)

So it begs the question: where did “flashmobs” come from?
The only source I could find with a “dictionary” definition was Wikipedia, which gave the source as a particular person in 2003.

I don’t agree. I believe such things aren’t an invention but an innovation.

If we look right back to the 1960s there were programs on UK and US TV “pranking” the public – sneakily rolling cars without engines down to a garage and asking mechanics to look under the bonnet (hood) to see what was wrong with it. Putting goldfish shaped pieces of vegetables in a fish tank on the counter of a shop and the owner taking them out, pretending they were live fish, popping them in his mouth and crunching them up in front of a gullible customer.

Also in the mid to late 60s there was “guerrilla performance” or “guerrilla theatre”, of performers appearing in public places and unexpectedly performing political or social satire.

Viewers in the UK will know of the comedian Dom Jolly who has carried on this tradition, but in a more “Monty Python” way, sitting shouting into huge telephones in parks and other public places, making people turn around and stare.

Myself I think of it as “physical graffiti”. Like spray-paint on an urban wall that after so many people have seen it will drift off in a mist only to appear somewhere else.

Long may this tradition continue.

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