KZBlog

Posting to an Astana community on LJ about Flash Mobs, translated here:
Question. Maybe someone knows.

Is there a flashmob in our town, and who does them?
Has anyone ever made a flashmob in the streets of our town?
If not, why don’t we develop this idea?

Then he links to Wikkipedia to explain what a flashmob is.

The last post says:

I offer this: In front of the Ministry of Finance there is a box with a cop inside. For 10-15 minutes at 30 second intervals, people walk up to him and ask ” excuse me, could you tell me the toilet is? =)


Now I realize that flashmobs can be totally random, and apolitical, asocial, acausal (as it were). Arguably a pure flashmob should have no agenda, no message, no purpose but the action itself, meaningful in its own randomness. But the flashmobs I have heard about*, at any rate, tend to be linked to a political or social message and I am amused that Astaninskii can’t imagine that sort of meeting. They are just bored and want to get in on the stuff they see on the MTV. Of course, they may be aware that they can get arrested for dressing like the President and doing a tap dance, but they could get in trouble for any sort of disturbance and I suspect the apolitical stance has been internalized. Or am I an amateur anthropologist?

* He has never seen anything to write home about, therefore there is nothing to write home about.