bryant

Tonight was the first Boston flash mob. (The mailing list isn’t hard to find, but I think I won’t link to it; email me if you want to know.) It went OK. I showed up and got instructions around 6:50, and hit the designated spot at the designated time. People were kind of quiet, as per instructions, but not really. Then someone hushed the crowd, and the crowd obeyed. Cool.

A minute passed.

I started whistling Happy Birthday, since we were all there to buy a card for Bill. People picked it up.

I made as if to sing a bit of Happy Birthday, but a woman caught my eye and shook her head. I stopped. We whistled a few more bars of the song.

She caught my eye again and mimed clapping. I nodded back at her. We got the applause started; the entire mob caught it.

We stopped, and the crowd dispersed.

Good mob. Needs more interesting things to do; this one was really a repeat of the rug mob from NYC without quite as much focus. But it’s a nice start.

Larry Niven, you were right.