Remember flash mobs? The passé form of spontaneous crowd surges had all but disappeared, but they're making a comeback. You won't find the anarchic, line-dancing happenings at Main Street Street Square, Hermann Park or the Galleria ice rink, though.

Instead, this new wave of flash mobsters is finding its base on the city's rim.

The flash mob concept was first disseminated by Bill Wasik of Harper's Magazine in 2003 — that's two years before the launch of the viral format of YouTube and three years prior to the advent of Twitter. Wasik's social experiment was intended to satirize hipster artists and the conflicting desires to conform and be an insider. Soon, almost anyone could be an insider, from Sound of Music savants in a Belgian train station, to participants in a T-Mobile advert in London's Underground and fans of Modern Family.

The evolution from avant-garde absurdism to commercial platform spoke to the flash mob's increasing irrelevance, but the trend is still riding high along Houston's periphery. This Saturday, HoustonFlashmob.com has organized a baseball-themed flash mob near a Bath and Body Works in Town and Country Center, around the intersection of Beltway 8 and Memorial Drive. Whereas the original flash mobs involved meeting at multiple locations, at which point last-minute instructions would be revealed, Houston Flashmob spilled all the details a solid five days in advance.

If you find yourself in The Woodlands on March 6 (and have a white or silver boa on hand), then you can cash in on a flash mob that will dance to ABBA's Dancing Queen. The flash mob's underground appeal has been completely deconstructed: a Facebook listing advertises dance practice events at Market Street (which, note, is not a street, but a series of strip malls built around a faux "Central Park").

For those unable to make it to the rehearsal, there's a YouTube video to train aspiring TW flashmobbers. Whereas the original flash mobs were distinctive for having no political or commercial agenda, The Woodlands incarnation has been arranged by the Indranis Light Foundation, an inspirational organization that works towards the empowerment of "maligned women."

It might be a cult. And it's definitely not cool.