Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

a flash mob are purposefully simple and short, since the essence of the flash mob isbrevity. 78 They have included asking participants to twirl across an intersection, play agame of “duck, duck, goose” in a park, bow and cower before a model dinosaur in a toystore, or raise ringing cell phones into the air. Participants must scatter at the end of aflash mob to maintain anonymity.The first flash mob was organized by a figure initially known only as “Bill,” aNew Yorker who claimed to work in the “culture industry.” Planned for 3 June, 2003,this flash mob was aborted when police found out about the anticipated gathering andbarred entrance to the target location, a Claire’s Accessories store (Wasik 57). In theMarch, 2006, issue of Harper’s Magazine “Bill” revealed himself to be senior editor BillWasik, who kept his name and position secret to preserve the essential anonymity of theflash mob. In the article that “outs” him as the inventor of the flash mob phenomenon, heexplains that his motivation was a social experiment into the “deindividuation” that urbanlife causes. Defining deindividuation as a psychological state in which people do not payattention to others in a group as individuals, but rather see only the group as a whole,Wasik wanted to see in practice how this mob mentality causes individuals loose theirinhibitions (56). Thus he devised the concept of the flash mob, a public gathering thatrequires participants to act without reservations.Wasik does not cite the Yippies as a model for the flash mob form. There is nodirect link between Yippie actions in 1968 and the contemporary flash mob movement.78 Indeed the flash mob name might refer to the form’s essential shortness. Creator Bill Wasik claims thatthe form was christened the “flash mob” by blogger Sean Savage of cheesebikini.com after a 1973 sciencefiction short story (57-58). Savage denies the connection to the story, but does not explain how he came upwith the name (“Flash” par. 7).210