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Flash Mobs: Peaceable Assembly for Spontaneous Fun
Schmendr1ck writes "The Orlando Sentinel is carrying a story on the growing trend of 'creating a crowd on a moment's notice for no particular reason' knows as a flash mob. Recent flash mobs (sometimes hundreds of people) have wandered into into an upscale NYC shoe store acting like confused tourists from Maryland, gathered at the Hyatt near Grand Central Station for 15 seconds of spontaneous applause, and converged on the Macy's carpet department to debate the quality of the rugs for sale. Check
cheesebikini? for pictures and info on past mobs, as well as links to sites that organize these events. Sounds like a fun, harmless, and Constitutionally-protected way of blowing off a little steam."
Why? What's the point?
this is a re-occuring skit on trigger happy tv, where someone will blow a horn or something and a crowd of people in red robes will start worshipping someone. etc.
Actually it's not constitutionally protected anyway. These people are doing this on private property and can be removed at any time by the request of the owners. If they fail to leave they are trespassing. If they decide to do this in a park or a public space then it would be constitutionally protected under the right to free assembly, however doing it in Sears doesn't fall under that category.
Electronic sheep?
[o]_O
This country is totally going down the crapper, when there's all this ridiculous, unfair, unjust stuff going on and people are organizing these pointless stand ins.
Think of it as a testing ground for more smart spontaneous protests.
Will anyone organise a flash mob to boo an RIAA lawyer?
Moderators, how is this insightful?
First, these do not appear to be protests, so it's comparing apples to oranges.
Second, if you follow this logic, then you might as well stop going to bars, movies, singing, playing music, watching screensavers, and other "fruitless" endeavors until you've solved the world's problems.
This poster probably also derides liquid nitrogen cooled pentiums and potato guns and every other "worthless" geek project posted to slashdot.
I think you need to realize that there really IS no point.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
They're having fun. They'll laugh a lot the rest of the day. They'll tell a whole lot of people about it. That's not doing nothing. Works for me.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
Flash Mobs work because of people like you.
Rememeber youre in slashdot. This is where people built beowulf PDAs and emulated a PC in a PC which ran an emulator which ran a PC. Its all because we can, and just because. Its that feeling of control over things and exercising it with no purpose which makes it all interesting and geeklike. Protesting something is just too usual.
Also note people would have different agendas.. geeks with differing nationalities etc, but a flash crowd gathers these various people with absolutely nothing in common except for the unreasonable excitement about creating a flash crowd. Try it. Youll never go back to protesting.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
--Famous misquote of Emma Goldman
Sometimes, people just want to have fun. Fear not; some people have already figured out that organized coincidences can be effective protests. See: Critical Mass bike rides. More will figure this out over time. Right now, just enjoy it!
Side note: The story behind the quote is here.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
It makes me wonder if we are on the verge of creating a trans-human intelligence capable of consciousness.
Nope. We're not. We're just minimizing individuality by removing context, thus encouraging our pack-instincts to re-assert themselves.
Too bad we don't have any formal idea of what intelligence and conciousness is, or we could analyze the situation more closely...
We have all sorts of formal ideas. But when we start to talk about them, some jackoff gets their religion embroiled up in the debate, and it we don't get anywhere. (Both theists and atheists are guilty here.)
My view of life is not fatalistic. I still believe that individuals have the potential to excel and find peace, but the world as a whole will always be screwed up, simply because of probability. There will always be screwed up people in the world doing screwed up things.
You're view is fatalistic. There is no way out with your mindset.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
From article: Getting groups together is easier these days thanks to e-mail, Savage says, but that's only the start. Imagine how simple it will be to assemble a flash mob, he says, when cell phones and handheld computers are equipped with "location aware" technology that will emit a "ping" at the right moment and tell potential mobbers exactly where to go.
Just replace "potential mobbers" with "police." 'nuff said. Not in my cell phone!
But on topic, what these people are doing is seriously funny. If I lived in a major city that was doing those things it seems like it would be a great thing to do to ward off boredom and seriousness. Normally, I'm the kind of person who's paranoid about the cameras, under the fear that I'll do something that "looks" suspicious in my every day activities, and be questioned for no reason because of it. This seems like a good way to confuse the heck out of normal people, with pure surreal action.
In a way, it reminds me of something we used to organize way back in school. Anyone else have a tradition where a large group of classmates would pick a keyphrase to wait for a lecturer to say, and then upon that word, everybody shifts weight, turns a page, or something of the like? Less organized than these 'mobs' but still a lot of fun, as immature as we were. I mean, are. Yeah...
This is hardly the same thing. Yes, the police were completly out of line in this case and were handed thier asses because of it. My point is that if you assemble on private property and are asked to leave you have no constitutional protection that allows you to stay there. The people that have been "flash mobbing" have been doing so in malls and other "public" places that are privately owned. If at any time these people are asked to leave and do not, they are tresspassing. Your story is completly unrelated, and is a blatent example of police abusing thier authority.
Some people express themselves in flash mobs.
/..
Some by painting pictures.
Some by writing.
Some by being assholes on
All are legitimate forms of art.
btw, fuck youasdf
The desire to be special is one of the most "normal" human inclinations of all.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
Support NRA, America's oldest civil rights group.
*begin rant mode in 3...2...1...*
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Fun my ass! You obviously have never tried to get thru a city during CM. The idea's not having fun, it's taking a mob mentality in thinking it's ok to disrupt everybody's life because you're pissed at the world.
I've always been one for peaceful demonstration and whatnot, but Critical Mass has always been a HUGE peeve of mine. What (and nobody I've asked has been able to answer this) is it supposed to accomplish??? Change? Well, it doesn't make me want to leave my car at home. It does, however, make me want to run down the next cyclist I see. Awareness? I know they say any publicity is good publicity, but pissing off the city isn't the way to gain support for a cause...
I might even agree with your cause. But the only thing making me late for work is gonna do is make me vote against whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.
Truth is, I've always thought of CM events as collective hissy fits. Just kicking and screaming and basically being annoying as hell.
If you want to bitch, fine, but direct it at someone who gives a damn and can do something about it. But don't fuck with the roads and interfere with all of us who are just trying to live our lives in peace and do our friggin jobs.
*sigh* It's so goddamn childish...
Princeton Illinois just made it illegal for groups to assemble in public. Big story around here. Tired of the kids causing trouble or something like that. I never cease to be amazed at how quickly the fundamental tenets or our society can be brushed aside.
If one cannot freely assemble in New York, then citizens of the place are no longer free human beings as defined by the Constitution. No debate required, that's just the way it is.
The question then becomes:
How much do you value the ideas presented by the Constitution?
And hey, maybe the brand of freedom offered in New York is good enough for your tastes. But don't take too much consolation from that. Look around the world and back through history and you'll see human beings finding all sorts of things palettable. If you get enough people content to subside on dogshit, that's what they get. You want to have better and keep it, you're gonna have to demand better. How demanding is America of it's freedoms in 2003?
If concepts had graves, the headstone for our lost freedoms would read:
"If you have nothing hide, you have nothing to worry about."
"You have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything wrong."
What merits hiding? What is considered wrong?
Who determines these things if there is no longer a Constitution to define the spectrum of what a free human being can expect to be able to do within his own life?
Could you be content to place the entirety of your freedoms sqaurely in the lap of John Ashcroft? How about a future that contains a succession of people just like him, one after another. Mix that with corporate governance and policing as witnessed by the DMCA and RIAA.
The future will continue to be grim so long as we have a populace that's too foolish to understand the value of the protections given by the Constituion.
Sorry. but you really are a unique and beautiful snowflake, just like everyone else.
try riding a pushbike for a while.
You'll discover exactly how innattentive, childish and selfish the average motorist is.
As a city pushbike rider of long standing I can tell you, its the *pointless risks* car drivers take with your life, that really frustrate and annoy. And they happen every day, on every ride. Except for CM day!
You can put up with a little delay every now and then whilst we train more drivers to remember who we are. Lets face it, we put up with a mountain of crap from you lot...
So this is basically a bunch of people going and doing a real-life meat-space slashdotting of public places?
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
>mob mentality thinking it's ok to disrupt everybody's life because you're pissed at the world.
Mob mentality also involves assuming that everyone (who matters) thinks like you. CM rides disrupt drivers because they are pissed off at drivers. Drivers - as CM rides so very clearly show - aren't the whole world.
You're right that it serves no purpose and that it's inefficient. So, when did we become robots? Go back to Soviet Russia, comrade, your groupthink will be very welcome there. M'yeah.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
> The idea is that having fun and taking over streets, no matter what one's political orientation is, is a good way to make a statement
Make a statement about what? That you don't care about inconveniencing others and you've time on your hands?
I was just reading along, and POW, your somewhat incoherent and completely out-of-place comments hit me! Sure, what he did might not mean a whole lot, but it's completely fucking ironic that you would say that, and fail to realize that the same applies to trolls on slashdot! With such a dramatic outcry like that, you would make a good example for your army of drama queens to follow.
1: driving is a privilege.
/. comment that I feel no need to get brought up on RIAA charges just to prove my piracy is an act of civil disobedience. How do I reconcile the contradiction? By accepting the delays that come with others' protests as my contribution. In return, I keep my anonymity.
2: however abstract your claim to want to kill people for slowing you down is, I don't think that's a sensible argument. Voting against your beliefs because more-deeply-committed adherents inconvenienced you... that's self-destructive.
3: walking, biking, etc. are rights.
4: when your rights are routinely ignored in favor of big, fast, lethal and underutilized (1 person per SUV?!) cars, it's time for a good, old-fashioned sit-down strike that reminds people that all those advantages (big, fast, safe-for-me, comfortable, convenient) can be stripped away in a moment.
5: take a close look at the next footage you see of cities in china, malaysia, etc. Hmm... lots of bikes. Ever wondered how it must feel to live with 365 days a year of CM-esque complications? Ever wondered if we could end up like that, with another few decades of globalization?
6: I know of three people whose lives were suddenly and deeply changed by some dumbass ignoring them while on a bike. I know another couple motorcyclists similarly injured. Resenting being late is lame compared to the alternative...
Where I live, there is no Critical Mass. But in winters, sidewalks become the highway's dumping ground for road slush until they're unusable. Crossing a bridge without a car is impossible for an agile adult male, let alone someone less agile. God help anyone who literally can't afford a car or has to wait until the next paycheck to fix their ride to work. Sitting by while RIGHTS are put on hold in favor of a majority that can afford to drive... that's enough for me to agree with CM. Incidentally, I can afford to buy my way out of this bind. I just hate having to drive when 10 minutes on a bike could get me to work.
Ironically, 'to just live in peace and do my job' is why I recently wrote in a
I do think the founding fathers understood that public speech might cause disruptions in our preplanned lives. That is the nature of protest: to get the attention of a bystander, to compell them to think about your plight. Resenting someone for making you late is shooting the messenger. If you really feel that way, would you feel that way if it was something vitally important to you that was slowing people down?
--advaitavedanta
Just ask them what they earn. When they refuse to tell you ask them why they want to keep it secret have they done soemthing wrong?
No the police were NOT "handed their asses" over the issue. Most of the pigs involved suffered no reprecussions at all. Basiclly, all that happened was that the department offered up a couple of sacrificial lambs (one of whom was allowed to resign instead of being fired) to take the blame off of the rest of them.
Whould SHOULD have happened, is that EVERY SINGLE OFFICER involved in that incident should have been immediately terminated; banned for life from working in anything resembleing law enforcement; and had all their assets siezed and liquidated; the proceeds going to compensate their victims. I would even argue that prison time equal to the collective time that their victems spent in the lockup would be in order.
When the people who actually abuse the power entrusted to them are held accountable, and PUNISHED for that abuse of power, rathar than being allowed to pass the blame off on to a handful of scapegoats, THEN I'll smile about the pigs finally being "slapped down pretty hard". But what happened here was nothing of the sort.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...