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Ad Agency's Bizarre Steve Jobs Tribute Flash Mob Hits Seattle
theodp writes "File this one under it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time. The Filter digital agency decided to show off their Steve Jobs spirit on the first anniversary of Jobs' death by declaring Friday Steve Jobs dress-up day. But where things really took a turn for the worse was in Seattle, where Filter employees took it to the local Apple Store where they formed a Flash Mob of Steve Jobs dress-alikes dancing Gangnam Style. Hey, even our best of intentions sometimes go awry."
Or not.
GangNAM Style
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Awry is when they're told to leave, don't, police are called and 37 people get pepper sprayed in the face.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It was a pretty lousy flashmob, badly choreographed, and not really that funny, but I wouldn't say anything went awry. TFS makes it sound like someone got clocked in the face by a startled bystander or knocked over a table full of expensive laptops.
I thought the other Steve at Apple did everything and this Jobs guy was just a CEO with a poor reputation. Why such the cult like following?
What he said.
Kurt
GangNAM Style
You expected cultists to be aware of anything outside of their own little world view?
The sad part of this is we have to look forward to this Chairman Mao sort of cult worship for years.
This is how religions are born. I'm waiting for the push for a national holiday.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Exactly. What happened to honoring the Apple sense of style?
Jonathan Ive isn't dead.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
i tried to get there
but the map on my iphone didnt work
Dumb.
I couldn't even watch it. Just looking at the still before pressing 'play' was enough to turn me off. Of all the things you could do, acting out a tired internet meme that wasn't really interesting the first time is just . . . sad. They might as well have been bouncing around in banana suits and singing "peanut butter jelly time" for all it mattered.
Pretty sure he works for Apple; not this ad agency.
While I find Psy doing Gangnam funny, this article was not. It wasn't even interesting. It makes me sad that I even clicked one of the links.
Best intentions! My ass.
Ad agencies don't sit around dreaming of good intentions. Also, I feel bad for the employee sheep and temps that were made to do this (if you're reading this, and some of you probably are, because it's probably your job to gauge the reaction of what happened, know that no job is worth this kind of demeaning behavior. It's grand time that you find something else).
At least, if the flash mob had been a bunch of genuine volunteers, they would have had enough sense to stop before even starting, and at most just one person, the one idiot who came up with the idea, would have partaken in his one person flash mob.
I would have watched that!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Meh.
Listen to this 1983 (pre mac) recording of his vision of computing. It's not equal to Doug Ebehart's mother-of-all demos in technical detail but it imagines the modern computing ecosystem and the times scales with breathtaking accuracy, right down to the economic need for the app store.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/02/steve-jobs-speech-from-1983-foretells-rise-of-mobile-computing-ipad
amazing for 1983.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Actually, the point was less about the song and more about the topic the song is about:
Gangnam is a district in Seoul, South Korea : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_District
And for what it's worth, the song IS satire
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Remember the Macarena? It's that, plus "LOL I'M SUCH A NERD XD"
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I work in Seattle, and inexplicably this sort of thing has been going on sporadically for a couple years now. People up here announce these things days in advance and practice ahead of time - and then call it a "flash mob".
Seriously. A year or so ago there was a printed advertisement announcing how there was going to be a "Glee flash mob" downtown, roughly two weeks ahead of time.
It's so completely NOT a flash mob; but they think it sounds cool so that's what they call it. But if it's anything, it's a "pre-planned costume party" more than anything else.
#DeleteChrome
Otherwise Steve Jobs might have sued them all for wearing a black turtleneck.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Well if anybody needed proof that the "Cult Of Mac" was a real phenomena? Well...there ya go. Can you picture anybody doing that for Google or Microsoft? not a chance in hell.
That's why I even though I don't care for Apple products I always give Steve Jobs credit, other people built companies, he built a happening with fans every bit as crazed as Star Wars nerds and Trekkies. Considering that he did it not once but twice, and the second time everyone said the company was dead, might as well "return the money to the stockholders' because its going nowhere but down the toilet? That is pretty damned impressive.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is going to cause some serious backlash. People might just dress up as rioting Foxconn workers and do the same thing to Apple stores. You just don't do something like this when the iphone 5 is in as deep of shit as they're in with the maps, lens problem, attempted anti-green manufacturing, human rights violations, and protesting manufacturers. It's like "yay, let's all have fun and be funny" amongst all that. Prepare for the retaliatory shit storm. Take a look at their youtube thumbs up to thumbs down ratio if you think I'm exaggerating.
I understand this is about Apple and Steve Jobs. However I don't feel think Steve Jobs worked in the fashion industry... He worked in the tech industry.
Personally I see this as a random company having fun...
This is a flash mob
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Yeah you'll notice Chicago features prominently on there. They're so frequent that they barely make the news anymore.
I don't get it's popularity or why it was associated with this guy in the West. That whole genre has been around for at least a decade and began with the Japanese well before that.
It wouldn't happen with most other companies, because none of them have one single figurehead who both runs the company, does all the big public presentations, and has a big enough ego to take credit for all innovative ideas while keeping a straight face.
But Jobs isn't entirely in a class by himself... We'll have to see how things go decades down the road, but I could certainly see geek-cult worship someone like Elon Musk if his luck continues. Probably others out there, which don't immediately come to mind.
And through the past, there's been ample hero worship from automotive industry legends, to a number of sports stars. You can even look at politics where Ronald Regan is worshiped by the right-wing, for no particular reason.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The Korean artist PSY's moves have been described as "a comical horse-riding dance". But to me it looks a lot like like "Jailhouse Rock".
Not the Elvis Presley song, but the deadly family of unarmed martial arts which includes moves designed to be performed while handcuffed or shackled.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Steve Jobs hated Flash!
You mean the studies which showed that the same parts of the brain that excites religious fanatics, is also excited by mactards didn't render the apple brand a religion, until just now!
Thanks for bringing that up evilviper because that one has always puzzled me...WTF is it with Ronnie Reagan and the right wing? He was a SHITTY president! Doesn't anyone remember the homeless vets sleeping on the grates in front of the White House? Or how he said "deficits don't matter" and proceeded to TRIPLE the debt under his watch? Iran/Contra? CIA drug running? Hello?
Why in the world do they choose HIM of all people? Hell if I were gonna choose a rep president to be proud of it would be somebody like Ike, at least he was a soldier and did great things for the country like the national freeway system.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I didn't even watch the video, encumbered as it is, but...
No, it's not amazing foresight or any such shit... It's just fucking *lucky*.
There are a gazillion pundits predicting all kinds of things and once in a while one of them (huge surprise there!) gets it right. It how old-time stock prediction scams worked, and it's how lots of current scams work.
HAND.
Their goal is to "change the world for one day"?
Adobe, prepare to be sued.