You receive a phone call or an e-mail. It instructs you to go to Taco Bell, lay down in the parking lot and quack like a duck. You do it.
Following in the journalistic tradition of picking up on \underground crazes"" that are neither underground nor crazes, American media have been awash of late with stories about flash mobs.
According to grammatical-error-ridden http://www.flashmob.com: ""Flash mobs are sudden gatherings of people at a predetermined location at a predetermined time. People in flash mobs usually perform according to a written script, then disperse quickly.""
Translation: Flash-mobsters, after receiving an e-mail or phone call, or after checking one of numerous flash mob message boards, show up somewhere and do something that is sometimes funny, sometimes symbolic and most often, very odd.
To curmudgeonly me, this seems a case of powerful technological weapons misfiring into the black hole of American pop culture. It's like using a MOAB to blow up an outhouse.
Digital technology gives mailboxes to people without homes. It allows us to work as mobile secretaries in the field. It gives us access to an endlessly diverse body of opinions and possible life choices.
And still, people with American Gladiator-esque handles like http://www.flocksmart.com's Shok, insist on using it to assemble people in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Jack-in-the-Box to perform a conga line.
This is a global phenomenon. But I'm worried about the United States.
We have the lowest voter turnout numbers in the industrialized world. A 2002 National Geographic Society Poll revealed that only 13 percent of Americans aged 18-24, the obvious target demographic for stunts like flash mobbing, could find Iraq on a map.
Eighty-seven percent of us were too lazy to locate the country the man we were too lazy to vote against is shipping us and our peers to. Yet we have the energy for flash mobbing?
Furthermore, if you are motivated to mob, how can you be sure who is pitching you the idea? How do you know the person asking you to do jumping jacks in the parking lot of your local KFC isn't a PepsiCo representative trying to tire you out so you'll go in and buy a soda?
Of course, in the case that flash mob organizers are using digital technology to support worthy political causes, like dressing up as housepainters and tricking Trent Lott into signing a confusing contract with small print that allows them to paint his house hot pink with yellow lightning bolts, I grudgingly approve-with one caveat: that they stop inventing digital names for pre-digital phenomena.
One such misnamed mob posted at flashmob.com proposes that people gather in support of-get ready for this-presidential candidate Howard Dean.
I dug into history books in search of an instance in which a group of people got together in support of a political candidate. Turns out its been going on for a while, and it already has a name-rallying.
Get on your cell phone. Go online. The digital age is a fine time to be alive. So don't waste your time mooing at customers in front of the Westside Home Depot.
dlhinkel@wisc.edu.
