Otto Pohl
New York Times
Aug. 6, 2003 12:00 AM
BERLIN - All at once at 6:01 on Friday evening, about 40 people in the middle
of a crowded street pulled out their cellphones and started shouting "yes,
yes!" Then they began clapping.
Margarethe Mueller, emerging from a nearby department store, sensed that something
was happening. She just wasn't sure what.
"Someone told me Jan Ullrich is here," the 66-year-old retiree said,
straining to see if the Tour de France runner-up was on the scene. She spotted
a man on a bicycle, decked out in the spandex peacock garb of serious cyclists,
his cellphone in hand.
"That's not Jan Ullrich," she said, disappointed. "Can you please
tell me what is going on?"
Many people were asking the same question. The telephone-wielding crowd was
the latest incarnation of something called flash mobs. Called into being on
short notice by Web sites and e-mail distribution lists, flash mobs meet at
an appointed time, engage in some organized spontaneity for a few minutes, then
rapidly disperse. The activities are innocent, if mysterious, and tend to bring
together loose groupings of surprisingly conventional-looking young adults.
Brimming with such a lack of purpose, the fad has found a home in Berlin and
across Germany. On Monday, at 5:05 p.m., mobbers have been called to gather
at the washing machine display in a department store in Dortmund, eat a banana,
and leave. But events have also been organized in Rome, Vienna and Zurich. Australia
is planning one.
New York is the acknowledged place where people first used the latest technology
to gather and delight in pointlessness. In June, more than 100 people gathered
in the rug department of Macy's, claiming to a bewildered clerk that they were
looking for a "love rug" for their suburban commune. The concept took
on a life of its own, propelled by e-mail, cellphones and the Internet.
Typically, instructions include somewhat awkward reminders to avoid the press
even while spreading the word, and to stay within the law. At Friday's non-protest,
a contingent of 11 police officers stood by, unsure what to do.
Howard Rheingold, who published a book titled Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, thinks flash mobs are part of a larger trend. "Right now, it's just people wanting to do something silly and it's not hurting anybody, so what's the harm?" he says on smartmobs.com. "But it shouldn't come as a surprise when this becomes a major outlet of political activism soon as well," he says, perhaps hopefully.
On Saturday, a flash mob collected near the American Embassy in Berlin, and
far from deriding policies, they waved flags and popped champagne. "Here's
to Natasha!" they toasted, before vanishing.
Tobias von Schoenebeck, a tour guide, shook his head when he heard about how
the phenomenon was traced back to Macy's. "This is just the sort of thing
that happens when you forbid New York to smoke."
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