Flash mobs have not all gone bananas

While browsing through dresses at a San Diego mall over the weekend, I heard someone call from outside the store that there was a flash mob going on.

I had never seen one of these in person before; I’d only ever heard about them through friends or watched the Edinburgh freeze on YouTube. I was so excited to finally be at the right place at the right time.

Flash mobs happen when groups of people go on the Internet, plan to meet at a certain place and time and, all at once, start playing air guitar, chase people, freeze in place or just behave erratically.

Sometimes flash mobs form with a political purpose, but the one I witnessed at a suburban shopping mall aimed to make unwitting observers feel uncomfortable and confounded, or at least pause for a moment and reflect on how an action so small could disrupt the normalcy of their day.

I rushed out of the store, trying to find the mob before it disappeared. In the open space between stores, there were maybe 40 people walking around, holding bananas up to their ears and chatting as if they were on cell phones.

They were definitely bending social norms, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as I’d hoped.

While some flash mobs probably get their energy from the amount of people that show up, in the case of the banana phone mob, strength did not lie in numbers. The main conglomeration of banana-yackers didn’t appear out of place with each other. It was normal behavior for that group of people. Because there were others doing the same thing, the always interesting possibility of insanity was immediately thrown out. The number of people assembled, in this case, diluted the message.

Slightly away from the main group, there were a few isolated bananas who had the opportunity to look anomalous, but the ones who had strayed from the herd seemed too caught up in the novelty for their acting to be believable.

There was a Girl Scout ignoring the banana at her ear, yelling to the crowd about Thin Mints and giggling every once in a while, clearly thrilled. A guy and a girl, about 16 years old, were walking side by side through the crowd talking too fast into their bananas for there to be a believable conversation happening.

I am proud to say that the ones who seemed the most into it were the 20-something, university-looking crowd. I saw one young man walking at a brisk pace, nodding his head as if he were listening to someone on the other end. He cut himself off mid-speech, as if struggling to get a word in edgewise, and when he spoke, he spoke clearly. Unfortunately, the subpar performances of his numerous peers negated this noble artist’s efforts.

This, of course, means that had there been fewer bananas, fewer people would have noticed ““ and my chances of finally getting to witness a social experiment would have been tougher.

But if you don’t do the flash mob right, it seems like a frivolous, unwanted critique of our behavior.

Though this mob didn’t work, other bizarre behavior has caused me to question what is considered socially acceptable. In the dining halls, my roommate used to enjoy putting a napkin over her face, cutting eyeholes, then going to get dessert. I’d watch from afar, marveling at her guts and relishing the astonished stares of strangers.

I also enjoyed a video on ImprovEverywhere.com that shows people hauling desktop computers to Starbucks, buying coffee and starting to work ““ something so small but so out of place. The next time I went to Starbucks, I really did chuckle at all the laptops ““ so conventional.

While I wasn’t amazed by the banana spectacle, I still reflected on their art as I browsed through the next shop. People are so attached to their cellular devices ““ we feel lost without them. And if we didn’t have phones, maybe we would pick up a banana in desperation. With Bluetooth earpieces getting increasingly smaller, it is not uncommon to see people looking as if they are talking to themselves. And a few years ago, that would have looked as crazy as someone talking to a banana.

As I moved to the shoe section, I concluded that I liked the effort of the flash mob, if only because I felt so lucky to have finally been there for one.

If you talk on a banana phone all day every day, e-mail Crocker at [email protected].