Youth Gangs Discovering Power Of Smart Mobs

from the had-to-happen-sooner-or-later dept

I've been doing my best to ignore the whole "flash mob" craze, because it seems pretty damn silly, and likely to be a fad that will disappear in a flash as well (though, the best description I heard of last week's blackout was that it was the largest impromptu "flash mob" of all). However, it's no surprise that other groups are picking up on ways to use flash mobs or smart mobs to their own advantage. In the UK, youth gangs of football (soccer) hooligans are apparently recruiting new recruits online, and then organizing them via text message - telling them when and where to show up, as well as who they should fight. They're also using chat rooms and text messaging to issue "challenges" to rival fans. Of course, this was bound to happen, but soon we're going to be hearing stories blaming all of this on the technology, rather than the bad seeds putting all of this together. Of course, this article could also be a bit overhyped - as many articles are about kids "mis-using" technology. The article linked here is a "roundup" of the original article (which is behind a paid curtain), so it's unclear how much actual evidence they have, and how widespread this really is. Update: Thanks to an alert UK reader telling me that this has been going on for at least 18 months - so it might be more of a case of smart mobs catching up with the hooligans, rather than the other way around.