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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Sat - July 26, 2003
Flash Mobs: Is Love Truly the Killer App?
Flash Mobs have assembled everywhere
from San Francisco to Vienna. They have drawn crowds numbering hundreds, if not
thousands of people—but why?
I
work for a dot com. I once developed software. I consider myself conversant
with technology and the mores of geek culture. Yet one internet phenomenon had
me stymied until recently: the Flash
Mob.
A Flash Mob is, quite literally, a mob assembled through an e-mail invitation to meet at a particular time and place for the purpose of performing a predetermined act, such as clucking like a chicken. A typical invitation to join one reads like this:
"Residents of Seattle: Pass this message on to everyone you know in our area. We will gather at the base of the Space Needle at 6:30 p.m. on July 30, 2003. If anyone asks why you are there, respond, "I am waiting for Godot." At precisely 6:45 p.m., we will all sing and chant the hokey pokey for 30 seconds. Then we will disperse."
Believe it or not, this sort of thing is quite popular. As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
Flash Mobs have assembled everywhere from San Francisco to Vienna. They have drawn crowds numbering hundreds, if not thousands of people. This photograph of a New York mob from a web site about the trend says it all:
Here's the quandary: Flash Mobs seem to have no common purpose or obvious payoff so why do people participate in them? And why are they becoming so popular?
It's not just an idle question. Collecting eyeballs—and, ideally, causing the owners of those eyeballs to fork over their hard-earned cash—is what branding and mass marketing and even political fundraising are all about. Millions of dollars are spent each year to ride the latest trends, to associate products with popular stars, and to convince consumers that Bounty is the Quicker Picker Upper and that they should rush to the supermarket to buy themselves a roll. To a marketer, then, Flash Mobs are the physical manifestation of a democratic, capitalist ideal. Flash Mobs assemble eyeballs. Better yet, Flash Mobs gather eyeballs voluntarily and virally. "He who harnesses the power of the mob shall profit beyond his wildest dreams"--Adam Smith, Chapter 1, Verse 1.
Marketing is about directing and controlling mobs—for what is a 20% off sale at Sears but a clumsy attempt to assemble and motivate a mob?—yet Flash Mobs in most of their current manifestations lack any obvious commercial or political purpose. Why, therefore, do they succeed so brilliantly at getting otherwise intelligent people to gather at random locales to perform absurd tasks? And would they continue to prosper if harnessed to support more complex goals such as political reform?
Perhaps some answers lie in the simplicity and purity of the Flash Mobs themselves—that Flash Mobs visibly manifest the otherwise invisible ties that connect us to each other. The glue that binds a Flash Mob's component parts isn't performing the Hokey Pokey, or any other ostensible purpose for which the mob assembles. The catalyst for Flash Mobs is, instead, the virtue and the purity and the wonder of assembly itself. We are a tribal species. We instinctively huddle with other members of our tribe. The longing for a sense of community and for shared experiences is what connects us all to popular literature (think "Harry Potter"), to the internet (think eBay), and even to religion (think King James Bible).
But the ties which bind us can also divide us. Which brings me back to the earlier question: Can the Flash Mob's phenomena be channeled toward more complex goals? My guess is: Yes, but the more narrowly defined a mob's purpose becomes, the fewer the potential participants. A Flash Mob can be more easily exploited (i.e., by handing out flyers or coupons when the mob gathers) than directed because any obvious effort at imposing focus will limit the universal attractiveness of the gathering and diminish the size of the mob.
Neither internet sites nor Flash Mobs succeed in the long-run by demonstrating people's differences. They succeed by building communities that showcase our commonalities. Flash Mobs show that short-lived communities can be built around the pure value of congregation, but the most effective and long-lived communities will always require the ability to reinvent themselves constantly to both influence and adapt to changing popular tastes.
This is the Yin and Yang phenomenon which confounds both marketers and emperors: Communities can be created with relative ease, but they can only be sustained by surrendering some measure of the control which once made them possible.
Afterthought: Perhaps Flash Mobs aren't just an offline phenomenon. Mobs are at the very heart of Google's search engine, which identities the most valuable sites as being ones which receive the most click-throughs and the most links. Mobs fuel both Morpheus and Kazaa. And mobs power Blogger too because the currency of the net is impressions and impressions can only be gathered through links, word of mouth, and effective searches (bringing us back to Google), which means that shared communities of thought are more influential than single voices. In an important sense, then, these companies aren't in the search, distribution or content creation businesses at all. They are in the business of surfing—and perhaps, to an extent, influencing—the rising and ebbing waves of mob psychology.
Updates:
To find out more about Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, a book about the impact of smart mobs technology, go here.
For continuing coverage and photographs of the flash mob phenomenon, visit Cheese Bikini.
For a history of the term "Flash Mob" visit Word Spy.
A Flash Mob is, quite literally, a mob assembled through an e-mail invitation to meet at a particular time and place for the purpose of performing a predetermined act, such as clucking like a chicken. A typical invitation to join one reads like this:
"Residents of Seattle: Pass this message on to everyone you know in our area. We will gather at the base of the Space Needle at 6:30 p.m. on July 30, 2003. If anyone asks why you are there, respond, "I am waiting for Godot." At precisely 6:45 p.m., we will all sing and chant the hokey pokey for 30 seconds. Then we will disperse."
Believe it or not, this sort of thing is quite popular. As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
Flash Mobs have assembled everywhere from San Francisco to Vienna. They have drawn crowds numbering hundreds, if not thousands of people. This photograph of a New York mob from a web site about the trend says it all:
Here's the quandary: Flash Mobs seem to have no common purpose or obvious payoff so why do people participate in them? And why are they becoming so popular?
It's not just an idle question. Collecting eyeballs—and, ideally, causing the owners of those eyeballs to fork over their hard-earned cash—is what branding and mass marketing and even political fundraising are all about. Millions of dollars are spent each year to ride the latest trends, to associate products with popular stars, and to convince consumers that Bounty is the Quicker Picker Upper and that they should rush to the supermarket to buy themselves a roll. To a marketer, then, Flash Mobs are the physical manifestation of a democratic, capitalist ideal. Flash Mobs assemble eyeballs. Better yet, Flash Mobs gather eyeballs voluntarily and virally. "He who harnesses the power of the mob shall profit beyond his wildest dreams"--Adam Smith, Chapter 1, Verse 1.
Marketing is about directing and controlling mobs—for what is a 20% off sale at Sears but a clumsy attempt to assemble and motivate a mob?—yet Flash Mobs in most of their current manifestations lack any obvious commercial or political purpose. Why, therefore, do they succeed so brilliantly at getting otherwise intelligent people to gather at random locales to perform absurd tasks? And would they continue to prosper if harnessed to support more complex goals such as political reform?
Perhaps some answers lie in the simplicity and purity of the Flash Mobs themselves—that Flash Mobs visibly manifest the otherwise invisible ties that connect us to each other. The glue that binds a Flash Mob's component parts isn't performing the Hokey Pokey, or any other ostensible purpose for which the mob assembles. The catalyst for Flash Mobs is, instead, the virtue and the purity and the wonder of assembly itself. We are a tribal species. We instinctively huddle with other members of our tribe. The longing for a sense of community and for shared experiences is what connects us all to popular literature (think "Harry Potter"), to the internet (think eBay), and even to religion (think King James Bible).
But the ties which bind us can also divide us. Which brings me back to the earlier question: Can the Flash Mob's phenomena be channeled toward more complex goals? My guess is: Yes, but the more narrowly defined a mob's purpose becomes, the fewer the potential participants. A Flash Mob can be more easily exploited (i.e., by handing out flyers or coupons when the mob gathers) than directed because any obvious effort at imposing focus will limit the universal attractiveness of the gathering and diminish the size of the mob.
Neither internet sites nor Flash Mobs succeed in the long-run by demonstrating people's differences. They succeed by building communities that showcase our commonalities. Flash Mobs show that short-lived communities can be built around the pure value of congregation, but the most effective and long-lived communities will always require the ability to reinvent themselves constantly to both influence and adapt to changing popular tastes.
This is the Yin and Yang phenomenon which confounds both marketers and emperors: Communities can be created with relative ease, but they can only be sustained by surrendering some measure of the control which once made them possible.
Afterthought: Perhaps Flash Mobs aren't just an offline phenomenon. Mobs are at the very heart of Google's search engine, which identities the most valuable sites as being ones which receive the most click-throughs and the most links. Mobs fuel both Morpheus and Kazaa. And mobs power Blogger too because the currency of the net is impressions and impressions can only be gathered through links, word of mouth, and effective searches (bringing us back to Google), which means that shared communities of thought are more influential than single voices. In an important sense, then, these companies aren't in the search, distribution or content creation businesses at all. They are in the business of surfing—and perhaps, to an extent, influencing—the rising and ebbing waves of mob psychology.
Updates:
To find out more about Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, a book about the impact of smart mobs technology, go here.
For continuing coverage and photographs of the flash mob phenomenon, visit Cheese Bikini.
For a history of the term "Flash Mob" visit Word Spy.