Yesterday (Wednesday, September 19th) there was an Improve Everywhere-organized MP3Experiment flash mob on the UW Madison campus. I heard about it about an hour before hand via Facebook, and immediately got hugely excited about it. Anybody who has thoroughly stalked my FB profile is aware that the Religious Belief I have listed is Flash Mobs, so this was an exciting chance for me to engage in... what, worship? Is that what religious people do? (More info after the jump)

The event began just as my office hours ended. Also, the instructions said to wear a Yellow, Red, Blue, or Green shirt and bring an un-inflated balloon. I had a red jacket, but no balloon, so I resigned myself to not participating. I just wanted to show up and see everybody being crazy.

So I arrived a few minutes late, and as soon as I approached the Library Mall, I received a series of high-fives (which I enthusiastically returned; high-fives are great!). Immediately afterwards, a number of people lined up behind me and started to follow me. They weren't copying my movements, just trying to follow. Having thus been given a tiny amount of power, I immediately abused it by weaving through another line of participants, breaking into a run, pivoting around a tree and attaching my chain to the end of another chain, then ditching them in the confusion.

Having thus extracted myself, I pulled out my trusty tablet and attempted to take some awkward, front-facing-camera videos of the action. Unfortunately, my tablet is being a butt and won't let me download the videos onto my desktop, so you'll have to wait till I can post them tomorrow.

I took a few videos, watching everyone run around, freeze, howl and cheer, and generally act bizarre. I downloaded the MP3 from the website while everyone was having a “nap time” moment on the ground. Meanwhile, I synced myself up aurally with their movements

The MP3 itself has instructions for behavior, often based on the color shirt you were wearing but sometimes not, with brief musical interludes to listen to while you complete the actions. The voice is masculine, but distorted, and calls himself “Steve”. As I plugged my headphones in and approximated how far into the track we were, Steve directed the group to form a bullseye, with Reds in the middle, Greens around them, and Blues on the outer circle. Yellows circled around the outside until Steve instructed them to be The Darts, and get as far into the grouping as they could.

Following that was a bizarre game of human twister; instead of spots on a floor mat, people had to touch their hand or foot to whichever colored shirt was called. It was pretty visually confusing, so I'm glad I had the MP3 playing at this point.

I decided I wanted to join in, regardless of my balloon-less state, so I slipped on my red jacket and took part in the next segment- freeze tag! Different shirt colors took turns being It. Red shirts far outnumbered the other colors, because we're at Madison and everyone has Badger memorabilia. Thus, the red-is-it round went QUITE quickly.

Nap time!

Next, we had to simulate an Epic Battle. Red and Yellow went to the North, Blue and Green to the South. We were supposed to stand at 20 paces, but the Library Mall was too tight, so we just ogled each other over the space. Now was the time for un-inflated balloons- our “weapons”. I would have been weaponless in battle if some lovely participants hadn't brought extras. We inflated, and girded our loins, ready for the rubbery batting of war.

This is where things got a little weird for me. Maybe it was the sinister music, but more likely it was the idea that we, as a group, without hesitation or question, formed battle lines against the people we had just been high-fiving. I flashed back to the Milgram Experiments.

More than that, the participants, in a near unison group, were engaging in activities that weren't being dictated from the MP3. The group had, within 20 minutes, formed such a unified, unspoken bond that as soon as one person rose their hands or started to cheer, EVERYBODY followed suit IMMEDIATELY.

And the thing is, that's part of the fun! I rarely take the leap of engaging in this sort of group culture before. Not that I'm not a part of groups and communities and all the splendid things that make humanity a whole; it's just that, in general, my instinct when I see a lot of people embrace an idea/action/object is to fight against it, for better or for worse (for worse in that it seems like this would make me a hipster, for better because being a hipster is something a lot of people do, so I naturally want to fight against it.)

One person was out of sync with the group, ahead by several seconds, so that when he carried out his instructions by yelling or falling down, the rest of the group followed noticeably later. And that was funny because he wasn't in sync with everyone; he wasn't part of THE GROUP. He wanted to be, but he couldn't quite manage. It was... eerie, how quickly ingrained the tribal/gang/group mentality got instilled in us- more so for me, because I jumped in halfway! Ten minutes, and I was already instinctively ostracizing a participant who didn't match or fall in line. Probably I'm just a bad person who wants to draw firm lines between Us and Them.

It's worth noting, though, that as soon as I started following along, I stopped paying attention to the people outside the group- and a decent number of people were on-looking with camera phones and actual cameras. Partially because I was too busy listening for instructions to worry or care about them, but also because they didn't matter. All the instructions I received, jumping in halfway as I did, pertained only to people participating. I didn't have to pay attention to the on-lookers; they had nothing for me.

There's definitely a paper on memetic culture waiting to be written on the MP3 Experiments. I'll... I'll add it to my list.

Anyway, as Steve said, “the first rule of war is Safety.” The battle ended quickly (presumably because of the number of red shirts getting killed in exploratory missions. Listen, we weren't getting out of this without a Star Trek reference). Everybody died quite quickly, so we laid on the ground in our dramatic corpse poses while the sounds of battle clashed in our headphones. At the end, we were dutifully reminded that War Is Bad, and that Nobody Wins, so any remaining soldiers still alive (there were none) had to die. Political point? Or just a way of counterpointing the uncomfortable acknowledgement that sometimes people will do whatever you tell them to, even if it's dodgy?

According to Steve, since we all died gloriously in battle, we were all admitted to MP3 Experiment Heaven; we celebrated– in slow motion, naturally, because in Heaven, you have all of eternity to land that high-five. Thus feted, we looked up at the sky and waved, and shouted good-bye to Steve.

As the MP3 Experiement wound down, I was a little disappointed. Although I don't know how much longer I could have devoted to the experiment, it was kind of intoxicating to engage whole-heartedly in a sort of flip, nonsensical event as a group. I admit, I had got a bit of a high of doing it. Because, you know, religious experience! Also, hunger!

My main point is this: If you have a chance to participate in one of these flash mobs, I highly encourage it, because it is FUN and WEIRD.

 Links to other (better) videos:
The MP3 Experiment with UW Madison University Hosting
The Daily Cardinal's Video