"Flash Mob" Plays Duck-Duck-Goose

This from the San Francisco Chronicle - "Anarchy rules! Flash mobs -- big, spontaneous crowds that celebrate organized chaos -- are fast growing around the world. Their mission: to have fun. Their message: There isn't one."

200 people form an instant game of Duck-Duck-Goose in San Francisco Dolores Park. Why? Because they wanted to.

All organized via weblog, email and word of mouth.

Their instructions:

-- At precisely 2:07 p.m., form giant standing circles, holding hands, on the main lawn.
-- Sit on the ground.
-- At precisely 2:09 p.m., something will happen. You will instantly know how to play along. Play until 2:17 p.m.

I've known about Flash Mobbing for a while, but this is the first report of people actually playing a game. Duck-Duck-Goose was a very important game for me personally - bringing me my first and biggest lesson about the "theater of games." So you can understand why this story caught my attention.

All of which is to point out that this Flash Mob fad is a legitimate new play form, worthy of the silliest of us. In case you haven't followed the evolution of this new Internet-spawned game-like event, click on over to a site called "Cheese Bikini?" (yup, that's what it's called, all right) and this more eponymously named site: "Flash Mob Info."