Feathers flying,
flash mob from nowhere
Hundreds of people show up for a giant pillow fight
By Toni Fitzgerald
Dec 3, 2009
Call it the flash mob from nowhere.
Four hundred people turned out in the town square in Plymouth, a town in South West England, last weekend, armed with pillows.
They'd been summoned for a pillow fight, and fight they did. Feathers flew, children shrieked and onlookers gawked for a good 10 minutes.
The cops arrived and waded into the crowd. Two particularly rowdy participants were subdued and the rest were ordered to pack up their pillows and go home.
By the time the crowd dispersed, the pillow fighters were grousing over the police involvement while the officers harrumphed that it was a wonder no one was hurt. As for the town square, it looked like a giant goose had exploded.
Thousands of feathers littered the sidewalk, posing public safety issues on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the last Saturday in November.
Now here's the mystery. Who assembled this flash mob anyhow?
Typically flash mobs are staged by a sponsor to promote a product or service, and the sponsor is more than happy to take credit, ideally in news reports as TV cameras arrive on the scene.
Not so here. No one has stepped forward to claim full responsibility, and it looks like no one will. Thus the flash mob from nowhere.
It just happened.
When police first heard about the event in the days leading up, it was rumored that T-Mobile was behind it, and in fact the mobile phone giant had staged a similar pillow fight earlier this year on London's Liverpool Street. Footage of the fight was later included in a popular TV commercial.
The word was that this, too, would become the basis of a T-Mobile ad, but T-Mobile has denied any involvement.
As it turns out, the pillow fight was organized by Smile, a small local theater troupe known for such stunts. Their previous stunts include flash mobs dancing the Macarena in McDonald's, reading books upside down at a shop, and eating dinner in slow motion at a restaurant.
But while Smile admits to coming up with the idea, the group says the gathering was hijacked. Someone posted an ad on Facebook hoping to entice 10,000 people to turn out for the fight.
Smile had intended to stage a much smaller event, and one using non-feather pillows so as not to create a mess.
"This was not in our control," a Smile spokesperson told the Plymouth Herald. "Our original idea was a small pillow fight which would last five minutes and leave no trace, exactly like our previous events."
The event has sparked a huge debate over the usage of flash mobs on the Herald web site, with more than 140 comments posted on the story. People seem to be split over whether the event was good clean fun or completely irresponsible, as the town council had to foot the bill for the feather cleanup.
Still, that hasn't seemed to douse Smile's enthusiasm for flash mobs. Its organizers promise another event will be advertised soon, though presumably with fewer feathers.
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