According to Wikipedia, a flash mob is “a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment and/or satire. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails. The term, coined in 2003, is generally not applied to events and performances organized for the purposes of politics (such as protests), commercial advertisement, publicity stunts that involve public relation firms, or paid professionals.”

Neither the Obama campaign of 2008 nor the Tea Party movement of 2009 can be characterized as flash mobs under that definition, although they share many of the same characteristics.

Under that definition, the Arab Spring protests also don’t qualify as flash mobs. They had a political point to them.

Flash mobs have overtaken London and other British cities. They don’t seem to have any point to them at all, other than rage and terror.

Flash mobs have also rose suddenly in many American cities. The Wisconsin State Fair was besieged by black flash mobsters whose only goal was to terrorize white citizens. Imagine, for a moment, if white flash mobsters decided to terrorize black citizens. Al Sharpton would be doing his new MSNBC show from wherever the white racists did their deed, and we would never hear the end of it.  Read more...