Flash mob fever

If you're not familiar with them, flash mobs are a new fad sweeping digitally hip populations around the globe.

Reporting from Berlin on how the flash mob scene is developing overseas, the New York Times' Otto Pohl offers this pithy explanation:

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.

Salon recently explored the inner workings of a New York flash mob, finding it part mischief, part performance art and part protest against the Powers That Be. Two women explained their participation with a couple of my favorite quotes so far this year:

Susan, 21, who heard about the project from a friend, said, "It's sort of like being at a protest, but without the politics." Melanie, 22, agreed, "It's not like you have to have a cause, to be an activist."

To learn more about flash mobs, and to track where they're erupting, check out:

• FlashMob.info and mob(b)blog for updates on where mobs are organizing.
• CheeseBikini, for detailed coverage of flash mob activity worldwide.
• Smart Mobs, a collaborative blog inspired by futurist Howard Rheingold's book of the same name that often delves into the deeper social and political significance of the phenomenon. Beyond protesting against nothing in particular, that is.

Has flash mobbing hit the Seattle area yet? Yup, there was one last Friday in Redmond, apparently, and FlashMob.info reports "rumblings" of another coming next week in the Emerald City.