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

Yet the insider/outsider dynamic of flash mobs was short lived as the craze beganto spread around the world. Photos from the first San Francisco flash mob of July, 2003,in which participants blocked an intersection as they twirled like children, show manypeople who would not fit Wasik’s description of the hipster. Instead of only cutting-edgeyoung trendsetters, there was a wide range of participants, from mothers carrying theirbabies to men in business attire (Savage, “Snapshots” par. 1). It must be the sharedfeeling of communitas and pleasurable experience of participating in a flash mob thatcontinues the phenomenon even today. For example, in January, 2008, participants fromthe New York-based environmental theatre group “Improv Everywhere” froze likestatues in the grand concourse of Grand Central Terminal, as commuters and otherpassers-by moved among them (“Frozen” par. 1). In response flash mobbers in Londonorganized a similar moment of frozen action in Trafalgar Square one month later(Improv, “IE” par. 1). As I write, I wonder if University of Texas at Austin students willcontinue their yearly flash mob tradition with a flash mob performance the first week ofApril, 2008.The flash mob craze of 2003, and its continuation today, demonstrates that thereis a future for Yippie-style networked participatory street performances. With newnetworking technology available in the twenty-first century, today’s activists are betterable than the Yippies to communicate among participants in a mass performance, andtherefore better able to control the performance outcome. Even as the Yippies inspiredtheir fellow activists with mass public performances that created a sense of communityamong participants, today flash mobs offer a new vision of community as a vast social223