Goffman received his bachelor’s from The University of Toronto, Canada, and was a former student at the University of Chicago where he received his Master’s and Doctorate as he study sociology and anthropology. Goffman published a book, The presentation of Self in Everyday Life in 1959. He also worked along with the National institute of Mental Health for one of his articles that he printed. Goffman got to accomplish many writing through his hard work as a student, a professor, and his desire to continue to develop his and the education of others. One of his works focused on micro- sociology, this term deals with how individuals begin and respond to several society environments, conditions, and interactions. Flash mobs show how micro-sociology is present in individuals in our society, and interacts with how we react towards other people. Which leads us to understand the why interaction with other persons is very important.
The goal of micro-sociology is in persons and interpersonal. A flash mob is an example to micro-sociology. Flash mobs tend to start by proceeding to a crowd discreetly and ending by leaving in a different direction and at a different timing as well. The flash mob was not successful due to the fact that many of us were to embarrass to make bird sounds in front of public. It would have been great if we were dressed in a certain way like have bird wings or something that represented birds visually and made a quick flapping dance and sound at the end. I did not happen to see some of the individuals who ignored us, I think I was more aware of the ones who had a great laugh out of us, and started making sounds along with us. Many individuals reacted this way because they did not want to be left out and be notice. Others preferred to laugh due to the fact that they did not want to participate doing the sounds, and because it was not a normal act to do in public. People also just find it easy to ignore because they learn to ignore certain actions that occur in life to focus on the important tasks that they have to do. Such as, the ones who prefer to ignore because they were too busy studying for a midterm. This action can be more like a flash mob due to the fact that a group of individuals are focused in doing one certain thing such as, bird sounds in public. At the beginning I was a bit scared to react and conduct a bird sound alone, but after I got other classmates to do it with me I was so confident that I kept on doing it without laughing.
Goffman states, that embarrassment is approached by keeping one self’s face, I can relate this in the fact that after I did the sounds, I tried to keep firm or talk to my friend on the side about something unordinary so I did not have to deal with embarrassment. Another suggestion by Goffman is to have an internal dialogue, I actually kind of talk to myself inside to keep firm and bite the inside on my lip to not laugh. These two actions did work to keep away from embarrassment.
To conclude, flash mobs are an example to micro- sociology because it interferes with how an individual’s react to a reaction of someone else that is out of the ordinary. Interaction with another individual is important because it not only causes a certain feeling, but at the same time it puts an individual in the spotlight and at times not knowing what to do.