Saturday August 30, 2008
Mob rule: The phenomenon of flash mobbing
Madeleine North
Independent
It started five years ago, in the rug department of Macy's, New York, and shows no signs of letting up. In fact, flash mobbing is bigger than ever. The Chambers Dictionary describes the phenomenon thus: "A group of people who arrange to assemble briefly in a public place to perform some activity, often of a humorous or surreal nature."
These "activities", word of which is spread via forwarded e-mails, social networking sites, text messages and water-cooler conversations, have taken the form of silent discos, kiss mobs, musical statues without the music, Circle Line parties, shouting in the manner of stock exchange traders, "wobbly bridge" congas – and the most recent incarnation, rick mobbing, rick rolling or, to give it its full Latin name, The Rick Astley Flash Mob, in which hundreds of people descend on a rush-hour station concourse and sing, a cappella, the lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up". And then leave.
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