Flash Mob Inventor Tells All
The March issue of Harper's has a particularly great article by senior editor Bill Wasik, whose name is probably otherwise unfamiliar to you. That's because he's lived under the shroud of secrecy — Wasik is the inventor of the flash mob. Remember those breezy days of 2003 and 2004? An email or a Craigslist posting would appear and a large group of random strangers would convene in a certain place at a specific time, do something odd, and then quickly disperse no more than 10 minutes later. Heady times, man.
As it turns out, the flash mob was all part of Wasik's evil plan to conduct an experiment on unsuspecting hipsters, based on concepts of deindividuation and scenesterism (please don't tell us the latter is now considered a sociological term). Flash mobs were a metaphor for the "hollow hipster culture" that gave rise to the "vacuous fad;" this past summer, when Ford Motors used the flash mob concept for its Fusion Flash concert series, the corporate adoption of a fleeting "scene" signified that Wasik's experiment was complete.
We just hope he's also behind Misshapes.
