behavior is applied to interpretation of a situation and the meaning that
individuals then apply to that situation. If we were to analyze the way people
act we would study their interactions. We would see how they portray themselves
and how others portray them. The way that roles are assigned and how we assign
them.
Goffman talks about the cues and norms that allow us to interact properly within society. These are our “performances” that he discusses within his work. Goffman has two definitions of
performances. First, is front stage performance these are the performances that
we enact on a day to day basis. This is the person we present our self to be.
This performance is highly dependent on the environment we are in. If
people believe our front stage performance and manner which is the role we
expect to play within our interactions with others. Our “self” therefore is
constructed and we are not really acting out who we truly are. We typically have
more than one front stage performance. The second performance is our back stage
performance. This is the hidden persona or personal behavior that we enact. This
performance is only seen by us as individuals and maybe people close to us. This
allows for people to rehearse performances or even create new performances
without an audience.
Within our Flash mob we see this interaction with others. We used symbolic interactionism to give
meaning towards our actions. Symbolic interactionism is that people
act on a basis of meanings attached to them and human interaction is essential
to these meanings. Secondly, social acts are critical and interpretation is a
process that occurs in other words we give meaning to our interaction. Lastly,
Social networks are dynamic or fluid and create a lived experience.
We used human interaction (bird caws) in a different environment, therefore
disrupting and allowing others to interpret our actions. We broke this social
norm and it made people uncomfortable. There were strange looks, laughter,
confusion and a girl even called out “grow up”.But why was this interaction
different than any other? Certainly, the caws made for a different environment
than usual in the quad, but who made our actions have meaning? It was the people
around us. We couldn’t of broken the social norm in our flash mob today without
others giving meaning to our actions. Our performances were all different.
Some of us cawed a lot and others didn’t caw at all. Some enjoyed our
performances and others were embarrassed of our performances. Yet, all of us
will have a different lived experience of the interactions and performance in
today’s flash mob. Not, one of us would tell our lived experience the same. We
all give different meanings to our interactions. We all were actors in that
sense. We were putting on a performance that was critical for breaking the
social norm. For our flash mob we were to change our front stage performance to
act like birds for 20 minutes.
Our performances allowed us to be seen regardless of the embarrassment.
I would argue that our Flash Mob was more of a disruption of a social environment. Only
if we all came together would I consider it a Flash Mob. To outsiders no one
knew who was in or out of the group, but making, it easier to disrupt people
around us. I felt very excited to complete this flash mob. It was entertaining
to see people confused and disturbed. Not very often do we do this allowing for
it to be rewarding when we do. Why do you think it was a Flash-mob? Why do you
think it was not a flash mob?