Blackout Brings Record Numbers To Latest Flash Mob Event
Millions Join In To Aimlessly Look Around, Express Puzzlement, Then Disperse

8/19/03 - Last Thursday saw all known flash mobbing records shattered when, at exactly 4:11pm Eastern Daylight Time, millions of participants synchronized watches and met on the streets of New York.

For those of you new to the latest craze, flash mobbing is the act by which a bunch of people are instructed via e-mail to met at a particular place and time, do something stupid, then go away, leaving onlookers in a state of temporary bemusement. Experts predict the fad to last about as long as the retro-swing craze that swept through dance halls across America from May to August of 1999.

Flash mobbing, it should be noted, has little to do with being naked, or being Italian. That imagery could not be reached for comment.

Participants last Thursday were instructed in an e-mail earlier that afternoon to gather at Gray's Papaya in Greenwich Village, look bewildered, and then "ask for information" from total strangers. Shortly thereafter, millions joined in on the festivities, with similar events taking place in cities across the United States and Canada at exactly the same time.

"Suddenly, it seems that everyone was in on it," said Bill, the elusive leader of the flash mobbers who apparently has nothing better to do. "I assume that that virus replicated the e-mail I sent out like a bazillion times, and then everyone simply turned out the lights and hit the streets. Amazing what I can do."

"It was really a lot of fun," said one participant wishing to remain anonymous. "But if we got to growl like a dinosaur again, that would have been way cooler." Indeed.