Talk About a Mob Scene

Ever hear of a flash mob?

Neither had I until fairly recently, when I saw a video on the Internet of a flash mob that gathered in downtown Denver to the puzzlement of bystanders.

It looked like a bunch of mostly young dads carrying babies and small children who seemed to be going through some kind of choreographed steps and movements to music.

When it was over, they all suddenly dispersed and departed in a hundred different directions.

Onlookers were left looking somewhat stupefied.

OK, this is kind of cute, I’ll give the mob that much. In an age of fairly regimented social behavior, this activity seems to step across those lines we tend to keep ourselves within when we’re sober.

I looked up flash mob and saw several articles about their activities across the nation. Mostly, they seemed to be innocent bursts of fun and enthusiasm on the part of youngish folks called together through social media such as Facebook, Twitter or text messages.

Many were dance-oriented, such as the one held in California on Aug. 21. That’s when a flash mob of dancers showed up at the Huntington Beach pier, cut loose to a hip-hop song and then vanished.

Again, onlookers seemed somewhat dazed and confused by the sudden entertainment but mostly appreciative of it.

There’s a Denver-based flash mob with its own website at www.denverflashmob.com that serves as a place for the flash-mob-inclined to sign up for notification of the next impromptu event.

Last May, they held the “Mile High Sky Stare,” which involved a crowd converging outside Coors Field about 30 minutes before a Rockies game. The idea was for one person to look up at the sky, point and gasp in horror and say, “Oh my God, what is that?” or “I have never seen anything like that before” with others following the lead.

Then after several minutes – at a signal – the mob suddenly dispersed into the gathering crowd of Rockies game attendees.

Harmless fun? Yeah, I guess. For those who like to blow people’s minds, it seems like a fun thing.

Others might say it’s juvenile and silly. Depends on your point of view.

I found out flash mob is a term coined in 2003, when a flash mob gathered at Macy’s department store in Manhattan around an expensive rug. Everyone in the mob was supposed to tell sales people they were all shopping together for a “love rug” and had to make a group decision.

Silly? You bet. Stupid, well, like I said, it depends on your point of view.

Certainly, most flash mobs are harmless fun with the aim of freaking out or entertaining the squares not in on the joke.

That seems fine. But unfortunately, flash mobs have evolved into groups with more sinister purposes.
On Aug. 18 in Germantown, Maryland, a flash mob of teens descended on a 7-Eleven store, ransacking shelves and running off with hundreds of dollars of stolen items. The incident was dubbed a “flash rob.”

Other spontaneous incidents of group nastiness – with mobs of teens suddenly gathering to randomly attack people – have occurred in Philadelphia and other cities across the nation. Police, mostly made up of older officers who aren’t social-media-savvy, have been at a loss in coping with the new phenomenon.

It’s too bad the harmless flash mob has apparently devolved into the flash rob and flash attack, but perhaps it was inevitable. 

Oh, the times we live in …

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