strange new development

[Guest guest]

Random acts of pointlessness - this summer's latest craze - are sweeping

across America and Europe. Here comes the madding crowd, warn Elizabeth Day

and Julian Coman in Washington

 

 

It is an overcast Thursday evening in Times Square, New York. In the Toys

'R' Us flagship department store, amid walls of candyfloss pink Barbie dolls

and escalators full of excited children, a group of 500 adults has gathered

round a 20ft-tall animatronic Tyrannosaurus.

 

As the dinosaur opens its fibreglass jaws to roar, they fall to their knees,

moaning and waving their arms in a gesture of worship. Four minutes later,

the group gets up and disperses without explanation.

 

Welcome to the world of "flash mobbing", the summer craze that is sweeping

America and much of Europe. Usually organised through the internet, a flash

mob of hundreds appears without warning, performs a surreal act and then

disperses in the blink of an eye.

 

In the words of one Boston "mobster", it is "an awesome grassroots goof;

it's French Revolution lite. Like celebrities who are famous for being

famous, a flash mob gathers because it can".

 

Last week, Britain experienced its first flash mob stunt. A group of 300 who

had been told of the event by e-mail gathered in three pubs in North London

and were handed instruction leaflets.

 

The directions told them to descend on an unsuspecting sofa store on

Tottenham Court Road and use their mobile telephones to text a friend with

the message 'Call me'.

 

"When they call, tell them that you are at the Flash Mob No 1 in London,"

the leaflets said. "Look at a sofa, view it with the reverence and awe that

one should have for soft furniture and speak the words, 'Oh, wow, what a

sofa.'

 

You must behave as if the letter 'O' never existed and omit it from every

word you use. Disperse promptly at 6.40 and leave the area. Say goodbye to a

person you do not know. Return to your life."

 

The uninitiated might be tempted to ask: What is the point? But having a

point, say flash mobbers, employing a cunning twist of post-modern logic,

really isn't the point of mobbing at all.

 

"Mister Zee", one of the organisers of the London event, a 40-year-old who

works in web design and computer technology, says, "The whole point is that

there is no point. People like the fact that they're not being used. It

works because there is no ideological point behind it. It has just become

unbelievably popular."

 

So popular, in fact, that Mister Zee, who lives in a suburban street in

Essex with his wife and two children, says he has been approached by several

large businesses vying to be involved in the next event.

 

Derrick Robinson, the manager of the Sofa UK store at the centre of the

London gathering last week, is astounded by his store's - and his own -

newfound popularity.

 

He is expecting a "flood" of customers in the next few days after

unprecedented press coverage, but is too busy to say anything more: "I've

just arrived at the BBC TV Centre darling. I'm off to do an interview!" he

says airily.

 

The trend, according to its would-be historians, began in New York in June,

when more than 100 people mobbed Macy's store in Manhattan. All requested a

"love rug" for a "suburban commune", sending shop assistants into a confused

panic.

 

Soon other New York sites were targeted. In Central Park, a mob tweeted like

birds and crowed like roosters. In a Hyatt Hotel, mobsters burst into

applause for no reason.

 

Across the United States, lovers of the absurd took note. Bizarre

instructions are now issued daily via e-mail to newly formed mobs throughout

America.

 

In San Francisco, where hundreds of mobsters recently rotated in unison on a

busy downtown street, actions are co-ordinated by "Mobgirl" and the

"Governor".

 

E-mail instructions are kept top-secret until the last minute. "The mystery

of it makes it better," says Mobgirl. "It's supposed to be a secret-agent

type thing."

 

However, the movement owes more to science fiction than it does to Ian

Fleming. Larry Niven, an American sci-fi author, minted the phrase "flash

crowd" in a 1971 short story of the same name.

 

In Niven's writing, a flash crowd occurred when thousands of people

teleported to the same place to witness a significant social or political

event.

 

But the man credited with launching the real flash mob phenomenon is Howard

Rheingold, the prescient, moustachioed author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social

Revolution.

 

The book, which explored the powerful use of computer communication by

campaigners, was published last October - seven months before the first

flash mobsters converged on Macy's department store.

 

"There may be some tut-tutting from some people," Mr Rheingold, also a

founding editor of the first commercial webzine in 1994, told The Telegraph,

"but there is a place for meaningless behaviour. A lot of the fun is in the

fact that there is no meaning to it other than doing it. My book appeared to

inspire people. It showed that new technology can enable new kinds of

collective action.

 

"Collective action can be political but it can also be social. It can be a

party. Whenever a new means of communication comes along, large social

changes follow. Flash mobbing may be a fad that passes away, or it may be an

indicator of things to come."

 

In Europe, flash mobbing has reached cult status, particularly in Italy and

Germany. A bookstore in Rome was recently inundated with requests for

Pinocchio 2: The Vendetta - a title that does not exist.

 

In Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard, hundreds of mobbers gathered outside

the American embassy to drink a champagne toast to "Natasha".

 

In Britain, a second flash mob event is planned for August 22, in Soho,

London, though further details are, of course, a secret. In the meantime,

flash mobbing web-sites have sprung up in Birmingham, Sheffield and

Manchester.

 

The general consensus among enthusiasts appears to be that as well as being

a pointless way of spending time, a flash mob gathering is also a great deal

of fun. Or at least the sort of fun you might enjoy if you are in your early

30s, read science fiction and work with computers.

 

According to Fred Hoysted, a softly spoken 34-year-old British banker

working in New York, "Most of the people who come tend to be white, in their

late 20s and early 30s and work in IT. The main motivation is fun. People

enjoy it. It's a bit different: many people have a very humdrum life and

it's good to just get out and about."

 

Mr Hoysted was at the first flash mob event in Macy's. He found out about it

on the internet and went along because it seemed "like quite a good idea at

the time".

 

Since then, his enthusiasm for the absurd has blossomed like a flower in

Central Park (where Fred made bird noises with the best of them). He now

goes to a flash mob gathering every fortnight.

 

His wife, Helen, 30, is planning to fly over to the UK for the forthcoming

inaugural Birmingham flash mobbing. The couple even talk of taking their

two-year-old daughter Alice along to the next event.

 

"It's interesting being part of something, getting attention and being a bit

cutting edge," Mr Hoysted says. "For me, it's also become a meeting place

for new friends. I'm a pretty reserved, stand-at-the-back kind of bloke but

I enjoy being there and seeing the expression on people's faces.

 

"When I get to my fortnightly flash mob, I leave from work, have a drink and

then go to the mob which takes about 10 minutes, then I'm back home in time

to read my daughter a bed-time story. It's a great way to spend an hour of

your week.

 

"People tend to be hostile because they think it's useless, but of course it

is. The point is, I do a lot of other useful things, but occasionally I like

to unwind."

 

For other "mobsters", the phenomenon is not simply an interesting means of

relaxation, but a more fundamental escape from the mundane into a

spontaneous mass community.

 

"We're the same as you," says a website message posted by the organisers of

the forthcoming Birmingham flash mob event. "We work in grey office

buildings. We have mortgages, bills, kids and we drive Fords. It doesn't

matter who we are, there is no individual - only the mob.

 

"Why are we 'mobbing'? For whatever reasons you believe in. For some it may

be an art installation, a cultural critique or anthropological experiment;

for others it may just be an excuse to do something different. We think it's

all of the above and more."

 

Desmond Morris, the zoologist and the author of The Naked Ape, sees flash

mobbing as part of a long-established surrealist tradition. It is, he

believes, part of a constant human quest for novelty, stemming from the same

impulse as teenage vandalism or performance art.

 

"We are the animals with the strongest sense of curiosity and the strongest

need for novelty," Mr Morris says. "The problem is how to create something

novel that isn't destructive.

 

"A bored teenager who lacks imagination might seek to create novelty by

smashing windows. Flash mobbing, however, manages to break up the monotony

of daily life by doing something inoffensive and harmless. It's a creative

challenge.

 

"Flash mobbing is a very healthy social symptom. Any culture that loses its

playfulness loses its humanity. It's a sort of huge practical joke."

 

If flash mobbing is a joke, it seems that some people don't understand it's

particular brand of humour.

 

Joe Dobson, in a message on the flashmob.co.uk website, asked, "With the

mass unemployment, vast numbers of people losing their livelihood and homes,

surely you should have better things to do with your spare time?" The next

entry says: "Get a life, lame ass."

 

It seems that it may take a while for some people to acknowledge the merits

of flash mobbing. Perhaps, like all the great artists, mobsters will not be

appreciated in their own lifetimes.