Flash Mobs Essay

1642 Words7 Pages
Nilapha Khotjak English 9H+ Ms. Zuidema October 22, 2012 Flash Mobs: Keeping Things Random Since 2003 A flash mob is a group of people who come together in a public place and perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief period of time before dispersing. Flash mobs are a surprising new trend; it hasn’t even been a decade since the first flash mob occurred in history. Bill Wasik, editor of Harper’s magazine, came up with the idea. “I used to walk by places and think: where would it be really funny if one day there just happened to be a mob of people there” (Wasik). Originally, the flash mob is intended to be a social experiment and Bill’s attempts to spread the idea started out as a kind of a “con job.” In order to make it “appear like one of those things circulating around the internet,” he created an e-mail address – themobproject@yahoo.com –, sent an e-mail to himself, and then forwarded the e-mail to about fifty of his friends. The first successful flash mob in history occurred in New York on June 17th, 2003. A group of around a hundred people flocked into Macy’s department store and discussed about buying a “love rug.” Soon afterwards, the idea of the flash mob is spread by the media as “the next big thing.” All around the globe, flash mobs started appearing in cities in various forms. Other than discussing about buying love rugs, there are flash mobs such as dance mobs, sing-a-long mobs, marriage proposal mobs, pillow fight mobs, freeze mobs, and many other kinds of mobs imaginable. Some famous flash mobs include the finger-gun fight flash mob in Trafalgar Square, London, where people shot each other with mock pistols and the ones who had been shot collapsed onto the ground and played dead. Another famous example is the freeze mob at Grand Central Station, dubbed “Frozen Grand Central,” where two hundred people simultaneously froze in place
Open Document