Although facing the contemporary events, it seems that I still like to think in some classical ways. I consider the flash mob is a synthesis combined with the following binary theses: secrets and demonstrations. At first, there must be a secret in a flash mob activity, people who participate the movement tell each other by e-mails, mobile phone, messages and the online forums, people prepare the items required and do what the dictations say, all in secret. Then, as the time is up, people come from all where being gathered suddenly to do something unreasonable. That is the flash mob.

A successful flash mob activity depends on how much the demonstration shakes the others and how the participators keep the secret. For instance, there was an activity is scheduled to call for people to worship the statues of lions before a department store near the Taipei Rail Station last week, but it was canceled just because the mass medium had already know about the activity and dozens of cameras were waiting for the mobs to appear. The mobs were upset and gave up their plan; I guess the reason may be that they cannot demonstrate their power but became a show boy/girl playing funny programs to entertain the mass medium.

Well, some people consider the flash mobs are doing nothing meaningful, just making fun with their self. But I guess the concrete wall between the secrets and the demonstrations, there comes meanings as well. No matter what the mobs do, the mobs want to say “Hey! You guys! We have our secrets too, we have our own rights to keep our secrets, and we did it! As what you see!” Here comes another dialect, the flash mob activities maybe the synthesis of the meaning and the meaningless. In my interpretation, if the flash mob activity is a kind of fighting or battle, what the mobs are fighting to, are those who have secrets, and those who watch the people letting none of them to have secrets. The mobs want to tell them, “We are not controllable”.

Schee, a Taiwanese blogger mentioned about There were some stories about the mobs on the Taiwanese Newspapers. On of the story said that the professors in Taiwan considered the flash mob activities are different from the anti-war movement or the hippies, it is quite impossible that the flash mob become a kind of true culture. Another story said that some teenagers are keen for helping the others; they are better than the useless flash mobs. Schee consider all the press and the professors are misreading the content (Well, I guess it should be context,) but maybe, they are just the context.

The professor appeared in that story is now teaching in the Central Police University (CPU), majoring in Criminal Psychology. I guess as he lectured about the flash mob, there was a schema in his mind. He is taking a point of view of how to control the teenagers to obey the social rules. Mass medium is the ideological machine to effect how the people think and to construct the society, they followed such a saying, it seems understandable. The controlled ones try to show up that they cannot be easily controlled, those ones controlling are persuading the others, the mobs and their self, controls will be continued, and rules will be continued. The mobs cut down the relationship to all other meaningful things in order to express the only one thing, they ignore it.

Secrets and demonstrations, meaningful and meaningless, being watched and getting rid of being watched, controllable and uncontrollable. That is my definition of the flash mob.