On the Origins of Flash Mobs

STAY FREE!: How did you first come up with the idea for flash mobs?
BILL: Basically, it started with an email. I created an email address--themobproject@yahoo.com--and forwarded an email to myself, and then I forwarded it to about forty or fifty friends on the premise that they would think, "Oh, Bill's heard about this interesting thing."
STAY FREE!: I didn't realize it had started out as kind of a con job.
BILL: Yeah, I wanted it to appear like one of those things circulating around the internet.
STAY FREE!: If you'd just sent it from the Mob Project, they would wonder: how did they get my email address?
BILL: Exactly. The original idea was to create an email that would get forwarded around in some funny way, or that would get people to come to a show that would turn out to be something different or surprising. I eventually came up with a lazy idea, which was that the thing would just have one simple, in-your-face aspect to it--there wouldn't be any show, and that the email would be upfront about the fact that it was inviting people to do basically nothing at all.
[thanks, Kristen]