1 post tagged “globalpillowfight”

Over the holiday weekend, London was part of a global flashmob pillow fight,  bringing people together to wack each

other. A good crowd of a couple hundred people turned up in Leicester Square, pillows concealed in bags, and waited for the cue to begin to pummel each other, when the clock struck 3 PM. Nearly 30 cities were struck by feather flying madness this weekend, including Beijing, Sydney, Budapest, Boston, making for a 'thump' you could hear round the world.

A Pillow Fight Heard Round-the-World!

Unlike the movie Fight Club where the first rule of the club is that you do not talk about it, this is one fight that the organizers want the whole wide world to talk about it. In fact, hearing other people talk about it is the only way you may ever hear about a flashmob happening at all. Flashmob events are word-of-mouth, viral happenings where participants connect via the internet and mobile phone text messages.

I've missed past events where people show up for a dance gathering, clubbing silent-disco style in a public place, to groove to their own private tunes, with headphones on. I was lucky to make it along for this flashmob. Despite the awful weather of rain, sleet and even hail that threatened the fun there was no shortage of pillow fighters in attendance. Like magic, the sun came out just for the pillow fight to begin in London.

I'd say that those pillows are a lot harder than I expected, as I got walloped from a few other pillow fighters that were passionately aggressive about the gathering. It was a great place to take your kids for some fun -- many families were out for some afternoon flashmobing and they were LOVING it! I bumped into some friends who were full of smiles, as their kids were having a great time of it.
People got creative with their pillows, writing slogans and phrases on the pillow cases. I noticed that retro cartoon characters were popular among pillow case selections, with the owner of a Garfield pillow diving headfirst into the crowd, and others showed their affection for Transformers.Garfield Gets In On Pillow Fighting:
Ah, a pillow fight, it is like being 12 all over again, but this time with the biggest slumber party ever!

There are plenty of photos from the pillow fights around the world posted online, and my Flickr image stream from London's pillow fight is here.