Flash mob or Fail mob?

Okay, Nuffnang organized a flash mob on the 13th June 2009 at 5pm. Or at least the details was “5pm till 7pm”. I was thinking flash mobs happen just within minutes so why do they need hours?

Mind you, this is the FIRST flash mob they’ve tried to organize in Singapore so if you’ve googled or yahooed about it, you’re gonna read the reactions of the people who went.

At the moment, if you searched for blog posts on it, half the people are saying it’s lame while the other half is saying it’s awesome. I’m going a bit “Ehhhh but it’s their first one so they could be better next time” since I know it must have taken quite a bit of planning and all too.

So pros and cons of the event!

These are not the flash mobbers. They’re passerby people wondering what is happening even before the flash mob started.

These aren’t flash mobbers either. All the pink stuff I’ve circled are people with DSLR cameras. There were quite a lot. That’s actually a pro and con. The pro, high quality pics. The con, IT IS NOT A FLASH MOB when it looks like a professional “media” event! If it were discreet cameras, yes but these weren’t discreet at all. I find the Canon logo in my picture ironic anyway.

Also, the flash mob didn’t start at 5pm. It was just the registration so those who read the info online were waiting for quite a bit. The real mob only started around 5.50pm or so.

There’s a reason why it’s called a flash mob. For those who didn’t stick around near the field and went off to the mob location (a few metres away, on the opposite side of Heeren actually), didn’t know that some police came around just minutes after the crowd dispersed after the registration and briefing to get to the other side.

Don’t know what they said to the organizers but hopefully next time there would be a more secluded briefing/registration area for the participants at least to not spoil the surprise, if not get the police interested.

In any case, who reported them anyway?!!? It’s a weekend and it’s in Orchard! Was there a concerned busybody or something? Good grief. I’m saying this because if you know that area, TONS of people go through in crowds.

These are actually actors, probably hired by Nuffnang to keep spirits up and increase the whole theme of it all. They were good by the way. Oh, what was the theme of the flash mob? Silently dancing in pajamas.

Okay, this was just… I don’t know. The info said it was just going to be a flash mob. It didn’t say it was to promote the Singapore River Festival (ha ha, I just promoted it there right then). So… This was commercialized???? Ugh. Whatever, I was just there taking pics and not part of it anywho. If I did take part in it, I would have wanted to know before and not be surprised that it’s to promote anything.

Good part of it all? The organizers do give out goodie bags for participants and there’s a blogger party for them to meet the bloggers they like (eg. Xiaxue, Sheylara etc etc I can’t remember names that much) and other stuff. Oh and they do get to meet the “star” bloggers before the whole flash mob thing.

Shut up, I was getting some long shot pictures of Xiaxue (cause she was busy with the participants who wanted pics with her too). I read her okay? Wasn’t sure where Sheylara was amongst the crowd. Knew/read her because of the Singapore X-box community.

ANYWAY…

So maybe next time if they organized the whole being actually discreet thing before the supposed event and to actually really state when it’s suppose to happen, it might be awesomer.

I know there were some people being anxious and impatient because it was stated to be 5pm but it wasn’t really while others were being confused on what was happening.

Anyway, you can find more exact details on other blogs via search. For now, you can somewhat see a youtube of the event here. I’m sure there’ll be more uploaded much later.

As for me? I think it was just… a mob since it wasn’t happening in a flash.