Questions for Bill Wasik’s “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project”

1. Marginal Notes

Marginalnotes2 

The link above is to pictures of my marginal notes on two different pages. The first picture is from page 476. In the first paragraph I underlined and circled information that illustrated Bill Wasik’s purpose of his Mob Project. I circled the line “a promise to create something out of nothing.” and wrote that this was Bill’s big idea or dream for his project. In the next paragraph I underlined the last sentence and wrote question marks next to it because I was confused as to what Bill was trying to describe. He wrote about a man named Eugene and how one day he closed his ice cream shop and left a note that said closed due to shovel. I knew that Bill was trying to make a joke or sound funny but I did not understand what the point of this story was and why Eugene would say closed due to shovel. In the next paragraph I underlined and circled some ways that I thought the internet extended Bill and his project so I could come back to them and use them to answer the second question below.

The next picture is from page 487. In the first paragraph I circled more information that I thought explained how the internet extended Bill through blogs. Many of these bloggers were writing about how the most recent mob didn’t meet their standards. In the second paragraph Bill talks about how he feels his Mobs couldn’t meet the bloggers expectations for accomplishing something bigger because he thought they were not able to convey a message. Here I challenged this claim by saying why not? Why couldn’t the mobs be used to get a message across? The mobbers could possibly hold signs or sign a song to bring attention to an important subject which could create more awareness for that subject and that would eventually convey a message to a large group of people. On this page Bill also takes a moment to include the naysayers point of view in his essay. I thought this was interesting and commented on this because we had recently talked about the ‘naysayer’ in class.

2.How does the internet extend Bill and what does this say about the internet

The internet extends Bill in a few different ways. Bill is able to start his project through e-mailing people about the mob. At first he wanted email to be the only way that he contacted people and to draw a crowd. “I could use e-mail to gather an audience for a show…” (Wasik, 475). He is using e-mail as a tool to reach out to as many people as possible. E-mail is just one way that Bill is able to spread the idea of his project. Other people also spread the news of the mob for Bill. During the different mob events many people observing would capture the event on their handheld cameras or phones and then share it with other people. “Still others lingered around, filming with handheld video cameras or snapping digital pictures,” (Wasik, 476). Some radio stations and different media stations would also get wind of the event, most likely through e-mail or the internet, and would capture everything that happened and then share it on their websites or newscasts. The news of these mobs spread so much that during the second mob two hundred people showed up and  “informed clerks that they all lived together in a Long Island City commune and were looking for a ‘love rug’,” (Wasik, 476). Bloggers on the internet also helped to extend Bill and his mobs, they eventually gave them the name ‘flash mob’ and spread the news and popularity of the mobs even further. “Perhaps most important, the Mob Project was almost immediately taken up by blogs,” (Wasik, 477). All these different ways that spread the news about the Mob Project shows that the internet can be used as a tool. It is a way to share information fast and efficiently.

3. Would you argue that Bill pursues purpose or meaning in his essay? How? If not, what is he pursuing instead? Does he accomplish what he sets out to do?

I do think that Bill is pursuing a purpose in his essay. He says repeatedly that is was trying to create something out of nothing and that the “only goal was to attract a crowd” (Wasik, 476). He wanted to see if he could get people come together essentially for no reason at all. Bill also claims that the Mob Project was about the herd instinct and bandwagon trend. “The mob was all about the herd instinct, I reasoned, about the desire not to be left out of the latest fad…” (Wasik, 480). This made the project continue to grow and attract more attention. Bill was eventually able to prove that humans have a desire to not be left behind. He provided a graph in his essay that showed how his Mob Project grew as time went on and more people found out about it. Everyone wanted in on the mob even if they didn’t know everything about it or even who was behind it. Bill quotes an interview that shows that the people involved didn’t even know all the details “Anchor: ‘Do either of you know who he is?’ Mobber 1: ‘Nope’ Mobber 2: ‘Well I’ve- I’ve emailed him. That’s about it.'” (Wasik, 482). People joined the bandwagon almost blindly. This shows that Bill was able to accomplish what he was setting out to do, to attract a crowd of people with no purpose at all.