Commentary
In February 2009, a young man posting on a website dubbed “The Urban Prankster Network” (Headquarters for Global Agents of Stealth Comedy!) suggested a novel way to cool off the city of Austin, Texas, when the inevitable hell of a Texas summer bakes streets and fries brains: a citywide water gun and water balloon war waged by a “flash mob.”
It could happen. American “flash mobs” often involve goofy stunts—the “digital social network” and “cellphone with text-message” age equivalent of 1950s-era collegians cramming sophomores into a phone booth (when phone booths still existed).
A flash mob organizer might send four accomplices a message like this: Paint yourself blue and show up at Sixth and Congress in two hours. In concept, the ability to communicate quickly and virally (think exponents—each friend contacts four more friends, and those friends four more) quickly multiplies the number of blue-painted crazies unexpectedly crowding a downtown sidewalk….