WHAT’S TO COME 45 Culture and Society / 46 Creating Culture / 49 Elements of Culture / 58 Cultural Variation BREAKING RULES AND LOWERING BARRIERS 44 causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places,” which Charlie Todd founded in 2001. Improv Everywhere has sponsored over 100 missions, some of which may be familiar because their videos have often gone viral. The No Pants event started in 2002 with just seven participants and grew larger each year, celebrating its fourteenth anniversary in 2015 with over 10,000 participants worldwide in 60 cities across 25 countries, including London, Tokyo, and Bangalore. In 2008, over 200 participants (“agents”) converged on Grand Central Station and simultaneously froze in place for five minutes, after which they resumed what they were doing as if nothing had happened. In 2009, they randomly picked a just-married couple departing the City Clerk’s Office and threw them a wedding reception complete with a formally attired wedding party, cake, a toast, gifts, and dancing. On January 11, 2015, Charlie Todd took a train ride on the New York City subway. He wasn’t wearing any pants. Charlie was not alone. In fact, he was joined by more than 4,000 other pantsless riders in New York City that day. They gathered in seven locations around the city, boarded 11 different subway lines, and headed toward a rendezvous at Union Station. They spaced themselves out across many subway cars, had minimal interaction with one another, and acted as normally as possible. The event was all part of the now-annual No Pants Subway Ride coordinated by Improv Everywhere, a self-described “prank collective that Culture 3 © Wu Kaixiang/Xinhua Press/Corbis
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