Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine, and self-proclaimed originator of the flash mob.
"For years he was 'Bill'—no last name—who cryptically told reporters he worked 'in the culture industry,'” wrote Emily Boutilier in the Winter 2015 edition of the Amherst alumni magazine.
Three years later he "revealed himself as the inventor" in an eleven-part series in Harper's,[1] having anonymously organized the first recognized examples in New York City during the summer of 2003.
He said the mobs started as a kind of playful social experiment meant to encourage spontaneity and big gatherings to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could.
He is also the editor, with Roger D. Hodge, of Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper's Magazine (New Press, 2008)