How to Create a Flash Mob Event

The first Flash Mob event was created by Bill Wasik, an editor at Harper’s Magazine. It happened in New York City in 2003. Back then, it was called “the Mob Project," an emailed art happening specifying the date, location, and time of the event. At Wasik’s 2003 event, hundreds of mostly strangers wound up converging on the rug department at Manhattan’s Macy’s Department Store, and just hanging out. When approached by salespeople, the flash-mobbers said that they all lived together in a warehouse and were shopping for a “love rug.” Then, at a given signal at a given time, the Flash Mob burst into spontaneous applause and then immediately dispersed to the astonishment of Macy’s. Seeing that his experiment had worked, Wasik then wrote a defining essay in Harper’s and so the Flash Mob was born. Since 2003, there have been other Flash Mob events, some with absurd purposes; others with specific serious purposes. For example, there’s a variety of Flash Mobs that are also known as Smart Mobs, as coined by Howard Rheingold, an expert on positive mob rule spawned mostly on the Internet.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Computer
• Internet Connection
• Cell Phone w/text messaging (optional)

1. You could start a Flash Mob the Bill Wasik way by forwarding mysterious email invitations. Wasik, however, believes that his particular viral email worked because of the sender’s anonymity and because it was the first of its kind. As for the email style itself, according to Wasik, the more mysterious, absurd, or “weirdly specific” the better. And underneath it all, the email must convey that the sender “isn’t messing around.” Also, it should convey that it’s “purely for fun” and “nobody was making any money off it.”
2. Start a Flash Mob group online. This can either be done by creating your own Flash Mob website with member registration capabilities, or starting a group on a Flash Mob social networking site like Xflashmobs.
   
   At Xflashmobs, a group can put together its own email list, and set up its own messaging system via SMS text-enabled or web-enabled cell phones.
3. If you don’t want to use unfamiliar social networking sites or forums, you can use one of the major social networking sites like MySpace and create a personal page specifically for the event.
   
   In 2006, 1000 people converged on downtown San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza and had a massive pillow fight. The details of the Flash Mob pillow fight event were planted on Wikipedia.

Tips & Warnings

• Like any act of civil disobedience, with Flash Mob events, no matter how benign, there’s always a certain amount of risk involved.