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E-Mail Mobs Materialize All Over http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59518,00.html By Leander Kahney Inexplicable "flash mobs" are starting to form all over. Begun in New York City, the gatherings are popping up in San Francisco, Minneapolis and suburban New York City, just north of the city. There also is talk of launching a similar group in London. Flash mobs are performance art projects involving large groups of people. Mobilized by e-mail, a mob suddenly materializes in a public place, acts out according to some loose instructions, and then melts away as quickly as it formed. In New York, the city's finest turned out in force to block the city's third mob gathering last Wednesday evening. Set to gather at 7 p.m. at Grand Central Station for what promised to be an elaborate "mob ballet," the crowd of about 250 was greeted by a "huge" police presence, according to the Mob Project's anonymous organizer known only as Bill. Bill said the mob moved to the Grand Hyatt next door instead. The crowd walked quietly upstairs to the hotel's mezzanine and gathered shoulder-to-shoulder around the balcony. "At 7:12, we burst into thunderous, screaming applause for 15 seconds, and then dispersed, just as police cars came screaming around the corner to where we were," said Bill. "It was fabulous." In Minneapolis, a mob is planning to gather at an as-yet-undisclosed location on July 22 at 6:25 p.m., according to the group's organizer, who asked to remain anonymous. The organizer said he has created a list of ideas, scripts and potential locations for mob events, but is worried about the gatherings getting out of hand. "The problem with mob events is getting the event at a location that won't cause a problem," the organizer said. "In Minneapolis, mobs have a real bad connotation. People think about the Minnesota Gopher hockey team and the carnage that resulted from just taking part in a hockey tournament. The last thing we want to see is an unruly mob event." For the last two years, Gopher fans have rioted in Minneapolis after NCAA championship games. "As long as we keep it brief and covert, I see little problem with the event," the organizer added. The Minneapolis mob has a discussion list at Yahoo. In San Francisco, a mob event is promised in "the next few weeks," according to organizer Rob Zazueta. Zazueta, a 28-year-old Web developer who works in the city, said nearly 200 people have signed up for the mailing list. Unlike the NYC mob, which is an invite-only affair, the San Francisco mob is open to one and all. "I didn't want it to be an exclusive group," Zazueta explained. "And besides, the more the merrier." Zazueta said the nature of the gathering has not yet been decided, but he's leaning toward some kind of collaborative art project. "I don't think there's a lot of sustainability to prankish mobs," he said. "They will have to be ever-increasingly clever to get people to attend and, eventually, I think some folks might just get bored with them. This is why I'm trying to think along the lines of organizing around an action or a creative activity." Zazueta also is working on a website for groups in other cities hoping to organize their own mob projects. (The site is not yet live). "There's a real desire for something like this out there," he said. "Community has always been a big buzzword in the Web space, and I think the smart mob concept helps to bring the virtual community into real space. No matter how good our devices become at allowing us to communicate, I think we're always going to need some real face time with folks." NYC's Mob Project organizer Bill said he was pleased with the ever-growing turnout. The attraction, he said, was that the events are part social, part political, even though the gatherings are expressly apolitical. "There seems to be something inherently political about an inexplicable mob," he said. "People feel like there's nothing but order everywhere -- even crowds these days are forecast and managed -- and so they love to be a part of just one thing that nobody was expecting." Sean Savage, a 31-year-old San Francisco designer and weblogger who has followed flash mobs, said these kinds of semi-anarchic gatherings have roots that go at least as far back as the late 1970s. Savage said San Francisco groups like the Suicide Club and the Cacophony Society have been staging group pranks in the city for decades, while Santa Rampage has been an annual San Francisco tradition for nearly a decade and has spread to more than 15 cities worldwide. "There's a vague, growing interest in grass-roots activity that transcends more traditional institutions," Savage said. "(They) prove people can still form ad hoc communities and make things happen that are beyond the reach of the gigantic, corrupt corporate and governmental powers that seem to dominate so much of modern life. But maybe I'm reading too much into it."
