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July 09, 2004
"Flash Mob" in the Oxford English Dictionary
This just in: Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 12:42:13 -0400 (Future humans? We're still working on the present humans!) [I pasted the text of the article below, because the Yahoo link will expire soon.] - - -
Posted by sean at July 09, 2004 10:56 AM | TrackBack (4) Comments
Few people can claim to have coined a word that made it into the OED. You should be proud. Even if you did censor me out. ;-) Posted by: Mike on July 28, 2004 06:17 PMThanks Mike Three people involved in kicking off flash mobs asked specifically to remain anonymous -- that's why I censored all those names by default. No offense! I put your name back in. Hold your head high Mike! Posted by: sean on July 28, 2004 06:27 PMI'm a little behind the curve on flash mobs, having left SF for the sticks some years ago and this being about the 2nd reference I've come across to them. It strikes me as derivative or at least an interesting extension of a Sci-Fi writers works I read years ago. I want to saw it was Asimov but it seems a little tame for him, maybe Ellison or Niven but I think I could be wrong on all three. Anyway, there was a writer with a number of short stories in the 70's that used the basic premise of teleportation devices like phone booths that could transport you anywhere. And from there he extrapolated into "flash riots". These were flash riots that would evolve when some kind of spontaneous mob riot would happen and then based on news media coverage many more people would teleport into the area. The media coverage was blamed for feeding the spontaneous riots. It's interesting to see a real-life variation on this coined as a dictionary word (wouldn't surprise me if the writer used 'flash mob' though I think it was riot) and to make the extension from that into looking at cell phones and text messaging as a sort of teleportation device fostering spontaneous crowds. I've heard there's a NYC list that text-messages celebrity sightings to subs who then often rush to the location. I gather from the Doonesbury mob and mailing lists that these flash mobs are more intentional and subversively planned and a little less than totally spontaneous and not done with intent much beyond surreal performance art or to demonstrate that flash mobs as a concept can be done. It's a neat idea but also easy to see why it could be seen be authority figures as something that needs to be controlled or squelched, especially with Slash Mobs and other jokes pushing boundaries that are a little frightening if they went past being a joke. The idea of a spontaneous mob converging, killing people and dispersing quickly sounds a little too real and like something we might see - perhaps not here, but imagine this in the middle east instead of car bombs. In the sci-fi stories I recall the police controlled the flash riots by turning all the teleport devices to drop anyone trying to escape into a depot instead of the destination they dialed in. In real life the logistics of getting a huge number in and out of an area safely, or penning and controlling dangerous crowds by police, seems a lot more complicated. I think there's got to a be a scalability threshhold where flash mobs could easily deteriorate into dangerous mobs despite playful or poilitical intent. Personally I find large crowd behavior a bit frightening. Even stadium sized controlled concert or sporting events leave me a bit wary. The spontaneous riots I remember in Berkeley in the late 80's were not politically motivated and quickly devolved into looting and vandalism and not much more until the only real point seemed to be the looting and vandalism. A bunch of college students stealing phones from smashed store-front windows was a far cry from Berkeley's riots in the 60's over free speech rights. Spontaneous performance art sounds cool but the possibility of those that take advantage and use crowds as something to hide behind or limite the likelyhood that they all get caught is a bit scary. How would we react to flash mobs of nazi-skinheads or gay-bashing that quickly disperses after violence? Or used to block abortion clinics or mob courts where controversial and despised people are on trial and attacking them using the classic lynch mob mentality. A powerful toy could easily become a dangerous tool. Posted by: beastyboy on September 14, 2004 12:03 PMBeastyboy: FYI, Larry Niven is the author you refer to, and the term he used (and the title of the novella he used it in) to describe teleportation mobs was "flash crowd." This term was later applied to the Internet, when the "flash crowd effect" was used to describe a Web server being swamped when news about something on that site spreads quickly and causes a large mass of people to try to hit the server simultaneously.
somewhat late a post, but a 'flash riot' of a more nasty nature did actually take place in The Netherlands a couple of years ago. i don't remember the date, but it happened that fans of Ajax and Feyenoord, two of the top three soccer teams, from respectively Amsterdam and Rotterdam, hooked up by mobile phone and met in a field besides a highway for a brawl. one person was killed. only because traffic cameras captured the event could the responsible persons be identified and brought before a court. Posted by: on October 9, 2004 07:49 PMforgot to leave my name and some googling provides the missing information: the incident took place march 23rd, 1997. it was an Ajax fan, Carlo Picornie, who died. the fight lasted for only 3 minutes and the number of vandals involved was 350. but this is only an estimate because most of them made off by car before police arrived. i'd call that a flash riot. Posted by: deh shoek on October 9, 2004 08:11 PMS T A N D I N G TUESDAY 1st MARCH 2005 Winchester cathedral Green You are invited to take part in a project, come rain or shine, at 12 midday go to winchester cathedral green and simply stand for 15 mins, then leave, simply. Or pass this on! Posted by: Anon on February 23, 2005 06:01 AMGreat Site Post a comment
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