There have been two brief, very brief, periods when I had some hope for the future of the internet. The first was in the late 1990’s, when it morphed from a military communication project to a potentially world-shattering new way to live. But, if I’m being honest, that optimism was far more about the idea of the internet than the thing itself. The second was in the mid-2000’s, when the absolute best internet phenomenon took the world by storm: the flash mob.
Flash mobs were a beautiful creation. Just about fun. Only about messing with people in public. Purely a means of making a more intoxicating world through absolute frivolity…so of course that didn’t last.
The president of the internet (I assume it’s Al Gore) must’ve decided that we were having too much fun, instead of being constantly afraid of everything and nothing, which seems to be the main point of the internet these days. Sure, there are still plenty of teenagers, hopped up on social popularity, dancing to silly songs on Tik-Tok (pointless but harmless) and some halfway decent sketch comedy, but otherwise it feels like the internet is just this device to keep us all in a state of low-level anxiety about things we have no say in, things we can’t really change. I assume it was Al Gore who tried to change even the phrase flash mob into something vaguely scary, something having more to do with crime than playfulness. If there’s one thing that guy has never been accused of, it’s being playful. Destroying America’s fun has always been his jam: censoring rock lyrics in the 80s, lecturing the world about Global Warming, etc.
I say, bring back the flash mob. Those things are nothing but pure fun. No money. No fear. Just fun. Both of the things I feel sorry for modern teenagers about are largely internet-based: their lack of fun and their lack of privacy. They feel the need to document every little thing and they seem like they’re having much less fun than teenagers used to. Both of those can change if they’d put their damn phones down for a minute and think up a cool new flash mob.