Nay:
Grow up, you’re not in a musical. Nobody wants to have their peace abruptly ripped from them like a vulture peeling the skin off a rodent’s carcass. If I’m ever strolling through the mall, minding my own business, and a flash mob suddenly breaks out, I fully intend to sue. Disturbing the peace is a crime. As far as I’m concerned, flash mobs are a bunch of show-ponies hellbent on commanding everyone’s attention, with the end-goal being to stroke their egos with a forced applause from any unfortunate onlookers caught in the blast-radius of cringe.
Now, I totally get the appeal of dance, and I myself am a fan of the artform; but jeepers, what are we doing, team?! We have dance studios and vacant sports fields for these things. If you absolutely have to rehearse and perform a colossal, 80-person dance routine, then do it well out of the way of others. Want people to see it? Film it and put it on TikTok or something. Otherwise, at the very least, there should be someone with a megaphone who enters the selected public space ten minutes before the chaos begins, issuing a clear warning to anyone who values their peace that they are about to utterly violate it with a lethal dose of second-hand embarrassment.
A final point that needs to be stressed is that many flash mobs are unimpressive, generic, entry-level dance moves. This makes sense because it allows many less-experienced dancers to be involved and give it their all. Tragically, however, this means that the ONE potential spark of a redeeming quality of a flash mob is immediately snuffed out. Even when the dancing is professionally choreographed, it’s hardly a blessing, considering that now you’re stuck watching a horde of dancers revelling in the destruction of your zen.
Yay: Lotto Ramsay
Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I swear flash mobs are redeemable – nay, important. Two words: Harlem. Shake.
In a world where going out in public puts one at risk of appearing in the background of a teen’s Tiktok dance, a flash mob would be a fucking breath of fresh air right about now – no editing, no screens, just pure unadulterated cringe the way the Lord intended. Humans are the social ape, our enhanced intelligence and language capacity makes us pack animals; in times aplenty we form herds. One could even say… mobs? It’s perfectly natural. Almost all cultures have a traditional or ceremonial dance, something passed on from generation to generation, something that the whole tribe knows and can join in on. Ancestral communal dances are the glue of society. It’s just that our society’s glue is the Macarena, which is humiliating. This could be a good thing.
Bear with me: Why has no one weaponised flash mobs yet?! It’s in the name really. If I didn’t know what flash mobs were and you told me one was coming to my work, I’d probably call a bomb squad and have a meltdown at my boss again. I do know what flash mobs are, and my reaction would be the same. Trapping someone with a flash mob is a yet unexplored avenue of human cruelty. I vote that we explore it, and the global reaction to James Corden’s mouse-onesie-clad dick-flopping publicity stunt is proof of concept.
Picture this: you’ve been lagging behind at the office. Due to employment laws, we can’t fire you. But you know what we can do, fucko? At 11:04am precisely you hear the squeaking of two dozen chairs pulling out from their desks, as the telltale intro to Pitbull’s ‘Fireball’ begins to play. You are stranded, surrounded; nowhere is safe – after all, the bigger they are the harder they fall, and this biggity boy’s a diggity-dawg. It is clear that none of us know all the moves, and you can hear perspirant grunting in the off beats. A colleague faces the wrong wall for the group twerk. You are forced to watch and fake-smile as we struggle through the full four-minute duration. How much time did we spend on this? How did we do so much behind your back? What the fuck did you do to deserve this hell? But alas, you can only grin and applaud. What are you gonna do, get mad that we danced for you, you absolute psychopath?
I dunno, guys. Communal jump jam for the cause of evil sounds pretty sick. Count me in, bozos. And-a five, six, seven, eight.