Reading between the lines, peering between the cracks, and turning over stones to see what lies beneath, Mass Observer aims to observe and report on interesting and unusual incidents, events, occurrences, people, and phenomena, anywhere in this or any other world.

The name was inspired by the Mass Observation group of England:

Mass-Observation was a United Kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. Their work ended in the mid 1960s but was revived in 1981. The Archive is housed at the University of Sussex.

Mass-Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires. They also paid investigators to anonymously record people’s conversation and behaviour at work, on the street and at various public occasions including public meetings and sporting and religious events.

The creators of the Mass-Observation project were anthropologist Tom Harrisson, poet Charles Madge and film-maker Humphrey Jennings. Collaborators included the critic William Empson, the photographer Humphrey Spender, the collagist Julian Trevelyan, and the painters William Coldstream and Graham Bell. Run on a shoestring budget with money from their own pockets and the occasional philanthropic contribution or book advance, the project relied most on its network of volunteer correspondents.

Mass-Observation began after King Edward VIII‘s abdication in 1936 to marry divorcée Wallis Simpson. Dissatisfied with the pronouncements of the newspapers as to the public mood, the project’s founders initiated a nationwide effort to document the feelings of the populace about the historical event by collecting anecdotes, overheard comments, and “man-in-the-street” interviews on and around the Coronation of George VI.

Here is a great article on Mass Observation in the September 11, 2006 issue of New Yorker, Surveillance Society: The Mass-Observation movement and the meaning of everyday life, by Caleb Crain.