August 17, 2003
RecallTV targets the recall election
The new website RecallTV will publish anything about the California recall election "as long as it is fun, interesting and entertaining," says its creator, Dan Jordan, aka Metro.
Flash mobs taking off
Amy Harmon in the Sunday NY Times: Flash Mobs: Guess Some People Don't Have Anything Better to Do. Excerpt:
Since the first one in mid-June in New York, hundreds of strangers in more than a dozen cities have engaged in such gatherings. The mob in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park last weekend played duck-duck-goose. Last Wednesday, in S“o Paulo, Brazil, people took off their shoes and banged them on the street. In one of New York's six flash mobs, the crowd dutifully followed instructions to mimic bird calls in Central Park for 20 seconds.Inspired by dozens of media reports and many more Web log postings, enthusiasts in Portland, Ore., Tempe, Ariz., and Toledo, Ohio, are planning their own flash mobs.
But the flash mob juggernaut has now run into a flash mob backlash that may be spreading faster than the fad itself. The collision has ignited a decidedly Internet-style debate on the nature of social connection in the digital age.
Anti-mobbers lump the flash mobs in the prank tradition of phone-booth stuffing, streaking, flagpole sitting and goldfish-swallowing. E-mail lists like "antimob" and "slashmob" have sprung up, as did a Web site warning that "flashmuggers" are bound to show up "wherever there's groups of young, naÔve, wealthy, bored fashionistas to be found." And a new definition was circulated last week on several Web sites: "flash mob, noun: An impromptu gathering, organized by means of electronic communication, of the unemployed."
Flash mobbers make no apologies for their lack of political mission, but stake a claim to significance nonetheless. They invoke Dada, the Yippies and "smart mobs," a term coined by the author Howard Rheingold, to describe the use of digital technology to mobilize people quickly for spontaneous creative gatherings. ...
