On June 17 2003 customers in a Manhattan supermarket were astonished by the view of more than hundred people requesting to sell them a love rug for out-of-town commune at the cost of $10 000. This was the first flash mob ever. It was neither a protest against something nor an advertising action; these people didn’t pursue any political object and were not members of any religious union. They say, it was organized by a man named Bill, who after several unsuccessful attempts managed with the help of e-mails and sms-forwards to talk into this idea a decent number of people.

That is how flash mob current began.

The idea spread in many countries in no time. In Rome 300 people tried to buy a nonexistent book in a bookshop. In Denver a crowd of 400 people has dispersed on several floors of a building, synchronously repeating movements of a ball for table tennis. In Saint-Petersburg 50-100 people were meeting with posters and baloons Tatyana Lavruhina from Moscow train. In Manhattan 250 persons entered a luxurious hotel and for 15 seconds applauded loudly and aimlessly. In New York, in a large toy shop on Times Square, nearby 300 people have suddenly stopped near a mechanical full-size dinosaur, lifted hands, declared the toy God, fell on knees and began to pray. Flash mob means “an instant crowd”.

Classical flash mob is a momentary appearance of people at a certain place and time (“smart crowd”); they act according to a set scenario with no specific goal (each person independently) and most often they are not acquainted with each other. In further development the notion “flash mob” obtained new features; in different countries this phenomenon acquired national coloring, different means of notification are used, actions are either entertaining only or are carry specifical social, artistic and other features. The notion “flashmob” today is hard to specify due to interest from mass-media, politics and advertisers – any action involving lots of people and outstanding activities is being fashionably called flashmob. But classical flashmob is the one that aims at astonishing people.

It is organized the following way: a large number of people unfamiliar with each other agree by means of Internet and cell phones upon meeting and follow the previously discussed plan of actions (for example, each person waters a tree on the main pedestrian street of the city and pays no attention to others; this flashmob was carried out last year in my city). The essence of all is in spontaneity, simultaneity and absurdity of the things happening. Imagine you are a passer-by who finds himself in a crowd of people acting as if they were mad. After such an experience a person gets to analysing whether the world around him has gone mad or he himself is insane.

This is actually the main objective of flashmob – to drive a person from the routine of seemingly stable life and make him see things with new eyes. As for flashmobers themselves – some see in it a sort of escape from every-day life, some have fun, some try to get rid of inner fears and complexes or aim at challenging the society. Though flashmob is a momentary action that deny any management, there’s a set of basic rules that cannot be violated:

1) Nobody can personify any authority in flashmob, that is why anyone can initiate and coordinate an action.

2) Democracy. Actions are selected by means of anonymous voting. If someone doesn’t like the selected action, he is free not to participate in it. Anyone can carry out his own actions if a decent number of people are volunteering.

3) Incompatibility with politics.

4) Total rejection of any money relations; no one can collect or give money for participation in an action.

5) Total refusal to provide mass-media with any information.

The main objective of flashmob being astonishment of people passing by, the information about new actions should be kept in secret. 6) Total depersonification: participants should know minimum about each other. Flashmob is in many respects a game for youngsters (the main verb among flashmobers discussing actions is “play” – to play a mob, a played scenario). Modern world leaves little place for the notion of game in general due to social, mental and economical factors. Being a game, flashmob carries out the function of idiocy and provocative carnival, shaking a stable state of human beings (without violation the law); that is why is also overcomes the repressive character of established cultural and social institutions and create the necessary prerequisites for their potential development.

People participating in flashmobs seek for simplicity and set fair rules of a game that is not dependant on their social status or income. The rules of participationg are as follows: to stick to the instruction received over the Internet; to come on time, sober and sane; to refrain from talking to other participants during the action, if not planned in scenario; not to laugh, not to answer questions of mass-media representatives if a unified variant of reply has not been accepted during preparation of the action; to begin and finish the action simultaneously – according to the signalling person or public watch at the place of flashmob; to leave the place of action to different directions.

Flashmob is significant and outstanding enough to give rise to jokes, based on true facts. Here’s the one I like the best (UKOS was one of the wealthiest oil companies in Russia, its owner and some top people are in prison for quite a while): Moscow, main office of Ukos. 12 a.m. Silence. At 12.05 a.m. 20 policemen buses with flash (pardon for pun) lights drive up to the building; dozens of armed men in uniform and masks circle the office in two rows, simultaneously release the locks on the guns. Captain in safety-belt coughs into loud-speaker and policemen shoot into air twice, clap their hands three times, dance in a ring around Ukos office for a while, get into buses and drive away. Silence. Grey-haired people look out of Ukos windows... Policemen flashmob... As they say, there’s a share of truth in every joke...