Flash Mob, new boards activity ?!

Wook

Invasion of the flash mobs
Bizarre, silly stunts arranged via e-mail

Craze has caught fancy of cellphone users worldwide


NICOLAAS VAN RIJN
STAFF REPORTER

Picture this: You're approaching the corner of Yonge and Dundas and suddenly, from out of nowhere, 100 men and women flood the pedestrian crosswalks, spinning and twirling as they cross and re-cross the street.

A few minutes later they've melted away, vanished without a trace.

Or you're at Chapters, absorbed in a leisurely examination of the latest bestseller when, without warning, scores of people come to a stop around you and start peppering the sales help with questions about non-existent books.

Within minutes they're gone and, but for the frazzled clerk, you'd be tempted to think you imagined it all.

Welcome to the flash mob, the urban phenomenon that's caught the fancy of cellphone users worldwide.

With a bit of planning and a few up-to-the-minute friends with text messaging, you, too, can create your very own flash mob.

"Everybody loves a mindless mob," said Merilyn Synder, who has participated in Manhattan's Mob Project, an e-mail driven experiment in organizing groups of people who suddenly materialize in public places to do one or another weird thing, and then disappear as suddenly as they appeared.

"I was so stoked when I got my invitation," Synder said. "No action, no protest, no needing to review my political stance on a particular issue.

"Just be there or be square."

But the prospect of flash mobs has been a concern to Canadian police, who went to unheard-of lengths last year to obtain rare authorization to jam radio and cellphone signals during the G8 summit of world leaders in Kananaskis, Alta., and during the Pope's visit to Toronto.

RCMP Corporal Benoit Desjardins said the jamming "could be used, for example, if there was threat of a detonation of some type of a remote-controlled device. We could jam the frequencies to make sure nobody could send a signal to that bomb."

But security observers say the jamming could have also been used to shut down cellphone text messaging and keep unwanted groups from coalescing in unexpected places.

Although they're still rare in Canada — there's word they've occurred in Montreal and Vancouver, but one of the delights of flash mobs is that no one except the participants know they're happening — flash mobs have materialized across the United States and Europe.

New York saw its first flash mob when a man known only as Bill, who says he works in the "culture industry," began messaging friends.

"The idea is mine, and I write the e-mails, but I don't think of myself as the leader of the mob," Bill wrote in an e-mail.

"In my mind (the mob) is led by whoever forwards the e-mail around. People make the mob through whoever they know."

Here's how one of Bill's projects went down recently:

The first e-mails went out instructing participants and their friends to go to a certain Web site to synchronize watches.

That done, they were all told to meet at a specific spot — under the palm tree, say — in one of four Manhattan bars. All those born in the first three months of the year met in one bar, those born in April, May and June met in a second, and so on.

Mob representatives in distinctive gear met the groups and passed out specific printed instructions.

That's how 200 people, pretending to be from the same non-existent commune, ended up flooding Macy's ninth floor carpet department last month and flummoxing the bemused sales help.

"We were told to say we all lived together in a big old warehouse in the suburbs," said Jenni Valton, a participant. After 10 minutes of discussing patterns and knots per square centimetre and the cultural influences on rug-weaving, everyone melted away.

Even to that there's an art.

"Part of a flash mob's beauty is that it dissolves immediately; everyone heads off in different directions, leaving onlookers completely confused," notes one set of instructions for a San Francisco flash mob.

On another occasion, hundreds of flash mobbers gathered in New York's Central Park and began making increasingly surreal nature sounds.

Europe's first flash mob, in Rome, saw as many as 300 people flooding a book and music megastore and asking employees for non-existent books.

In Dallas, some 40 people gathered one recent evening at the city's newest in-spot, the Angelika Film Center & Café on Mockingbird Lane.

They arranged themselves under red and blue balloons and, at precisely 7:43 p.m., the red group began yelling "Marco!" and the blue group responded "Polo!"

"Ten seconds later the group, known as TheMobProjectDFW, scattered like cockroaches when the lights came on," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last Friday.

Even the usually staid Swiss are getting into the act. During one recent flash mob scene at the Zurich railway station, flash mobbers formed a long single-file line with hands linked, dividing the station.

Say, is that your cellphone going off?

With files from Star wire services

damnyanks

About a month late

yellum

Try here

Wook

whoopsie , missed that one. :rolleyes:

DMT

You are invited to take part in MOB, the project that creates an
unexplainable mob of people
in Dublin City Centre for ten minutes or less. Please forward this
invitation to other people you
know who might like to join.
INSTRUCTIONS - MOB Number 1
Start time: Saturday, August 9th, 5.05pm
Duration: 10 minutes

(1) At some point during the day on August 9th, synchronize your
watch to <http://www.worldtimeserver.com/time.asp?locationid=IE>
or the speaking clock 1191

(2) By 4:00 PM, based on the month of your birth, please situate
yourselves in the places listed below . Buy a drink and act casual.
If you
are attending the MOB with friends, you may all meet in the same
bar, so long as at least one of you has the correct birth month for
that bar. Or, if you feel more like a cup of coffee than a
beer, or vice versa, choose your meetup spot accordingly.
January, February, March: The Palace Bar, Fleet St Dublin
1
April, May June: The Flowing Tide Lower Abbey St Dublin 1
July, August, September: Knightsbridge bar Bachelors Walk Dublin 1
October, November, December: The Q Bar O Connell Bridge (Upstairs)

(3) Then or soon thereafter, a MOB representative will appear in
the bar. He or she will pass around slips of paper with your
instructions. Commit the instructions to memory and put the slip
in your pocket. ONCE YOU ARE AT THE MOB SITE, NONE OF
THESE SLIPS OF PAPER SHOULD BE VISIBLE.
(4) Leave the bar and walk to the MOB site. If you arrive near
the
final MOB destination before 5:05, stall nearby. NO ONE
SHOULD ARRIVE AT THE FINAL MOB DESTINATION UNTIL
5:04.
(5) The MOB begins at the designated location at 5:05.
(6) At 5:09 you should disperse. NO ONE SHOULD REMAIN AT
THE MOB SITE AFTER 5:10.
(7) Return to what you would otherwise have been doing.

(8) After pints in Hogans on Aungier Street.

embee

a fatal flaw in your plan....

Saturday 9th august theres quite a large mob (135,000 people that is) gathering in the Phoenix Park for a wee concert.....

Is that not the worst picked Saturday of the whole year?

billy the squid

There was one of these flash mobs in the uk where 250 people invaded a furniture store and congregated around one of the sofas. They then had to call their friend on their mobile and describe the sofa to them without using the letter "o"

there is a flashmob website http://www.flashmob.info for your edification

DMT

Originally posted by embee
a fatal flaw in your plan....

It's not my plan, hence the [quote][/quote] tags.
Got it from here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dublinmob

Kastro

i got the rts email as well... thats today is it not???