Organization Slams Winter Carnival for Misconstruing Meaning of 'Flash Mob'

Written by Fezzik Vazzini Tuesday, 26 February 2013

The International Flash Mob Standards Organization (IFMSO) released a scathing critique of the 100th Winter Carnival Flash Mob, citing that it didn't meet the stringent standards needed to qualify as a genuine "flash mob."A member of the International Flash Mob Standards Organization, Inigo Montoya, expressed his doubt that the Winter Carnival Flash Mob was indeed a genuine flash mob. "You keep using that word," he said. "I do not think it means what you think it means."

"You can't tell anyone and everyone that there's going to be a flash mob going on," whined Knit Pick, president of IFMSO. "For goodness' sake, they had newspaper articles, public Facebook postings and even microphoned announcers telling everyone, 'OK, let's do that flash mob thing!'"

In IFMSO's report critiquing the Winter Carnival Flash Mob, the dictionary definition of the act was given: A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The Winter Carnival featured neither a sudden assembly nor any type of dispersal, according to the report.

"Yes, they had a nice dance with good choreography, but it's just not a flash mob," noted Pick. "I suppose they could call it an 'Organized Dance' or a 'Group Celebration' or even the trendy term 'Smart Mob,' but just not a flash mob. We need standards for these things, or we'll lose the hip cache that's currently eroding faster than favorability numbers for Congress. We're still trying to recover from the flash mob on Modern Family--we can't afford to lose any more coolness."