The Most Brilliant Prank I Wish I Pulled

If I may speak seriously for a moment:
Remember flash mobs? From a couple years ago? Where an email would go out with instructions as to where and when to meet and a bunch of hipsters would congregate in some random public place, do something surreal and then disperse as quickly as they had arrived?

When I first read about it back in 2003, as a new NYC transplant, I thought it was a very clever concept, and meant to go do it sometime, but I never got around to it and besides, by the time I heard about it, the whole thing had become overrun with hipsters and I didn't want anything to do with it, because I was not cool enough.

It was a classic example of how hipsters in New York jump on stupid bandwagons without really caring about what they were getting into. For example, all of a sudden a couple years ago, everyone started liking bands that sounded like early XTC and Gang of Four (Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, etc). The Gang of Four album was reissued at just the right moment and everyone was all over it, but XTC continue to languish in nerdy obscurity. Which is probably for the better. But I digress...

The point is, what seemed like a mildly clever prank on unsuspecting normal types (random group of hipsters comes out of nowhere, does something surreal, then disappears!) was actually a giant reverse prank on all the hipsters!!

Bill Wasik, an editor at Harper's, started the whole thing as an experiment in the "deinviduation" phenomenon that can be seen so easily in the hipster community here. He now explains all:

The basic hypothesis behind the Mob Project was as follows: seeing how all culture in New York was demonstrably commingled with scenesterism, the appeal of concerts and plays and readings and gallery shows deriving less from the work itself than from the social opportunities the work might engender, it should theoretically be possible to create an art project consisting of pure scene—meaning the scene would be the entire point of the work, and indeed would itself constitute the work.

So far there is only part 1 of the article (link via Gawker).

Now, if this guy is not pulling a double secret probation REVERSE reverse prank by making all of this up (which would be far less funny than if he were in fact telling the truth and it was only a level 1 Reverse Prank), then he is truly a Genius Among Hilarious Pranksters. I should just hang my hat up now.
Also, this is why any band that wants to make it should probably move to Des Moines or something.