Well, since most of my traffic these days seems to be coming from "chicago+flashmob" searches (you can get the latest by joining the email list here), I guess I should write something more about the whole situation. I don't know how this sort of thing is taking place in other cities, what the organizational backend looks like, etc, but here in Chicago it's marked by unrestrained bickering and grave attention to detail. Both of these things seem to me to be a little outside the spirit of the whole phenomenon, they're the kinds of things one might expect from some kind of politically motivated (or at least x-motivated!) protest, but not so much from a flashmob.
Then again, I'm not entirely sure how to read the phenomenon yet - there seem to be a couple different motivations here for participants, at least among the Chicago incubators. Some would turn flashmobbing into a political statement or tool; others seem to be aiming for a (usually humorous) performance, a kind of public entertainment. The tendency of the most vocal exponents seems to be toward a purely aesthetic experience, almost evangelically absurdist and obsessed with the notion that networking technologies bring about some kind of hive consciousness.
This last idea is the most insupportable - these mobs aren't really mobs at all, because everything has been carefully planned in advance, and someone's in charge. Without some kind of planning or coherent and enforced intelligence behind it, the whole project would fall into chaos, which would not be a flashmob. It makes more sense as some kind of performance art - but who gets to be the aritst?
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