Flash mob

A flash mob (or flashmob)[1] is a group of people that assembles suddenly in a public place, performs for a brief time, then quickly disperses, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and/or artistic expression.

Anyone approached by a sales assistant was advised to say that the gatherers lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York, that they were shopping for a "love rug", and that they made all their purchase decisions as a group.

[20] Subsequently, 200 people flooded the lobby and mezzanine of the Hyatt hotel in synchronized applause for about 15 seconds, and a shoe boutique in SoHo was invaded by participants pretending to be tourists on a bus trip.

[9] Wasik claimed that he created flash mobs as a social experiment designed to poke fun at hippies and to highlight the cultural atmosphere of conformity and of wanting to be an insider or part of "the next big thing".

"[21] In another interview 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".

[3] Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines flash mob as "a group of people who organize on the Internet and then quickly assemble in a public place, do something bizarre, and disperse.

[35] The press has also used the term flash mob to refer to a practice in China where groups of shoppers arrange online to meet at a store in order to drive a collective bargain.

[36] The city of Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany, has stopped flash mobs by strictly enforcing the already existing law of requiring a permit to use any public space for an event.

"[42] Mark Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, said that most "flash mob thuggery" involves crimes of violence that are otherwise ordinary, but are perpetrated suddenly by large, organized groups of people: "What social media adds is the ability to recruit such a large group of people, that individuals who would not rob a store or riot on their own feel freer to misbehave without being identified.