Soc 1010

Flash Mobs
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgso3Y-l0h8 
Doing Nothing 

JLG

Female Speaker:    It's like the creepiest thing ever, like -- 

Female Speaker:    I know.  

Female Speaker:    There's all these people walking in a line.  

Female Speaker:    They say nothing.  

Female Speaker:    Nothing.  Well, there were a couple people -- 

Female Speaker:    Some people were just like nothing.  

Professor:   Let's learn a little about sociology.  In sociology, we have this term called "norms."  Norms is societal expectations of behavior.  

We can break these down into two camps -- either big ones, which we call mores, or little ones which are called folkways.   

Mores are things like murder, or robbing a bank, or cheating on a partner.  

Folkways are smaller things, but they're still kind of "rules of the road", so to speak.  They are things like don't belch in public, or if I stick my hand out, you should shake it, or if I say, "Hey, how's it goin'?" I really don't want to know your life story.  

When someone breaks societal norms, we call it deviance.  Deviance means to deviate from whatever the societal norm is.  

[1:04]

When this happens, there are typically social sanctions.  It could be as small as me giving you a crazy look, like "What are you doing?" or it could be something as big as jail time or even the death penalty.  

One of the most pervasive social norms in our culture is the norm of activity -- of doing something.  Even when you're not doing anything, you're doing something.  

As an example, think about what people do at an airport when they're waiting for a flight to come in.  They don't just stand motionless, with no expression on their face.  They fidget, they fix their hair, they fix their clothing, they have a cellphone out, they are playing on that, they're reading a magazine.  

Even when we have nothing to do, we have to do something.  It's expected of us.  If you don't, you're considered kind of a weirdo.  

So I got to thinking, what if I took my class of 262 students and had them go into a public place and do nothing.  How would people react?  What would people do?  Would people think that they were creepy, scary, or maybe weird or even -- God-forbid -- crazy?  I wanted to find out.  

Here's what happened.  

[2:12]

Male Speaker:    I don't know if I want to keep moving, because they're going to stop me or something --

Male Speaker:    Man, it's too many people to be a class.  So it ain't a class.  

Male Speaker:    She's doing nothing.  She says she's doing nothing.  But she's doing something.  

[People clapping hands]

[3:04]

Male Speaker:    What were you feeling while doing nothing?  

Female Speaker:    I was amused.  The people at the tables were freaking out.  They were like, "What are these people doing?"  They kept asking everybody, to see if they could get a different answer.  

Female Speaker:    I saw one guy get in another guy's face about it.  He was right up in his face, like "What are you doing?"  

Female Speaker:    I was like, "Why are you so serious?"  

Female Speaker:   People had different reactions.  They were like, "Oh, they're playing freeze tag.  We have to go un-freeze them."  Nope.  

Male Speaker:    It felt pretty good.  

Male Speaker:    I really didn't know what to expect.  I was eager to see what we were going to do.  People were watching and laughing.  

Female Speaker:    I didn't expect people to stop and stare the way we did.  I know we expected to get strange looks, but there was actually a crowd outside of our circle, looking on.  It was a little strange.  

Female Speaker:    I definitely did not expect that people would take so much notice of us.  We were doing something as simple as standing there.  If I was doing anything like texting on the phone, or listening to music, nobody would pay attention me, but when you're doing something that's outside the norm, everyone stops and takes notice.  

[4:07] 

Female Speaker:    I was very amused, because people looked so baffled and really confused about what was happening.

Female Speaker:    Some people looked outraged and they just made me laugh.  

Male Speaker:    You heard some really odd remarks that you didn't expect, or that I didn't expect.  Some people got angry and said they should go push somebody or punch somebody in the face -- stuff like that.  

Female Speaker:    The people walking around would stop and whisper to their friends, "What's going on?"  They were scared.  "Is this a class?"  Some people were like, "Are they in trouble?"  "Is this a punishment for something?"  They would just stop and stare, and then when we began clapping and walking away, they were like, "Oh, okay, let's go to class."  "Alright, we'll see you later."  

Male Speaker:    Flash mobs?  Is that what they're called?  

Female Speaker:    What is a flash mob?  

Male Speaker:    They do stuff out of the norm, and then see how other people react.  

Female Speaker:    Yeah.  

[END]