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I've been to Burning Man several times and this article is spot on. No matter which year I go, there is always some new group "ruining" the event according to t

I've been to Burning Man several times and this article is spot on. No matter which year I go, there is always some new group "ruining" the event according to the "true" burners (and since BM is all about inclusivity, this group seems to grow exponentially). The first few years I came, the moaning was about "sparkle poanies", people in their 20s who came to party for a week with drugs, costumes, and glitter... without bringing a weeks worth of food or water and no tent or shade structure. This evolution is inevitable and it doesn't change the fact that there is no event like Burning Man on the planet. Standing in the middle of a dessert as a city as vibrant and alive as the Vegas strip pops up around you is an experience I'd recommend for anyone. In my opinion, the only group that is on the path to actually "ruining" BM is the organization itself. From the rapid price hikes to the parking passes to general incompetence running infrastructure for such a large popup event to clashing egos, every time I talk to a current or former employee I get the sense that BM is run by children, half of whom want to run it like it's the 90s when the event was a tenth of the size it is today. The worst part has been the antagonism between the BM org and the BLM/local law enforcement. Every move the org makes seems to make life harder for attendees (although the cops seem to have stopped arresting for drugs, giving out heavy fines to recoup lawsuit costs instead, so I guess that's a plus).

hashkb 10y ago
> no event like burning man on the planet Check out regional burns. They're smaller, but many are not ruined yet.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  You just ruined them. ;)
- akiselev 10y ago
  I've been to a few of those and while they're fun, they're only like the modern Burning Man because of association ans they don't have the same scale or funding. Burning Flipside, in Texas, was really really fun though. For those on the west coast, Fourth of Juplaya is the big gathering of Burners early in the summer but there isn't really a sense of community and everyone is really spread out.
  - errantspark 10y ago
    SHHHHHHH, don't tell anyone. You'll ruin it.
- happypants23 10y ago
  Ha. I've gone to AfrikaBurn a few times (largest burn after Burning Man). It started circa 2007 and the old-timers are already complaining that its ruined. Also juicy politics like this: https://medium.com/@kurtsiegfried/fear-and-loathing-at-afrikaburn-987f373e43eb https://medium.com/@kurtsiegfried/fear-and-loathing-at-afrik...
  - kbenson 10y ago
    That is perhaps the most densely phrase-ridden rant I've ever encountered. it's worth reading just to marvel at how much can be implied while saying so little definitively. The author effortlessly weaves idioms and references to create a narrative of abuse, which makes it easy to relate to the circumstances alluded to. It's masterful work, because even though I know nothing about any specific details, and this leaves ,me wanting to know those details before I take it as gospel, the truth is that a few months from now if AfrikaBurn came up in conversation, what I would likely remember is that I had read that it has real organizational and sociological problems. So, I guess that's goal achieved for this author, no matter how much at this point I want verification before accepting this.
    - danharaj 10y ago
      A masterclass in the art of vagueblogging
    - jzwinck 10y ago
      You're right. I proved it to myself by reading the whole thing replacing AfrikaBurn with IBM. It really works; e.g.: > By sleight-of-hand and the wholesale and completely unnecessary import of an unwieldy American pop culture franchise, a group of creatively blocked shadow artists, bureaucrats and box tickers are making an elaborate and specious lunge at celebrity through curation-by-funding. Employing savvy redistribution of money, they stand on the shoulders of established, older artists and their fashionable, younger counterparts, thus hoping to crown themselves the fairy godmothers of local pop culture. In short, involvement in IBM appears to be nothing more than a cynical exercise in associative branding for themselves and, in some cases, the products they promote in the real world. With apologies to IBM. You can use Monsanto or Tata Motors if you prefer.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > many are not ruined yet. From my "recently having read the article but never have been to burning man" mind, that makes it sound like it's just not succeeding.
- Fomite 10y ago
  So what you're telling me is next year, regional burns ruined burning man.
- catscratch 10y ago
  http://regionals.burningman.org/ http://regionals.burningman.org/ The map in that would probably overlay nicely with a global wealth map: https://cdn.credit-suisse.com/articles/news-and-expertise/2015/10/en/global-wealth-in-2015-underlying-trends-remain-positive/_jcr_content/content/image/image.revampimg.714.high.png/1460804002877.png https://cdn.credit-suisse.com/articles/news-and-expertise/20...
John23832 10y ago
Maybe I'm just ignorant to BM, but what does BLM have to do with this?
- woah 10y ago
  The Bureau of Land Management, aka the original BLM
  - John23832 10y ago
    Gotcha, that makes more sense.
  - l33tbro 10y ago
    Yeah you might want to spell that acronym out next time. BLM certainly has a bigger association for Black Lives Matter with most people, I would think. Was equally baffled.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dpwgroupie 10y ago
You've probably never read the DPW handbook, well you're not supposed to, it's not for public release. The Borg staff organizations know what they're doing, and they do a great job. You don't ever notice it, because by the time you arrive it's already there. DPW and Gayte have worked hard to make everything run seamlessly. The portopotties have shade so they're not as hot and gross, there's a huge power grid, lines have been running smoothly for entrance and exodus the last three years. Arctica makes sure that everyone can have fresh food and cold drinks. HEAT ran 12 hour shifts 24 hours a day to make sure all the art projects could finish. Sign crew make sure that every street corner is marked so that ambulances and emergency services will always have a point of reference (that's what those pvc posts are for). There's many more departments that work hard to make sure that staff and volunteers are fed, taken care of, and that safety is first. The borg is operating in their best interests, but the departments that make burning man happen work really hard to always improve year after year. So when that crusty DPW person flips you off, try saying, "thank you for your work".
- hinkley 10y ago
  When I was in high school I belonged to a club that ran two events every year. The spring event pulling in people from a 100 mile radius, the fall one from two states away. Other organizations in bigger nearby towns had a wider draw but for a town of 100,000 we were pretty well known. When I joined the same guy had been president of the club for years. And it wasn't until after I went to college that he retired, mostly from the grumbling. The fall event was run by a local business but manned by us and workers from another local business (the owner of the latter is now the mayor). And of course without the excellent town and county infrastructure services, few would have come that far. It wasn't until I grew up and moved away and joined other clubs that I realized how much hard and smart work these people were doing, and how tremendously hard it is to replicate. When an event almost goes right, it's easy to forget that because you only see the thing that went wrong.
- akiselev 10y ago
  I have no doubt they work really hard and believe in what they do but Burning Man succeeds every year because of the attendees and volunteers, despite the BM org best efforts to throw a wrench in the works at nearly every stage. I'm not talking about portapotties [1] or road signs or exodus (I don't expect BM org to magically expand the two lane road from Gerlach into a megahighway anyway). DPW does a great job with what they're given by management. I camp with a lot of volunteers, former employees, and people in charge of setting up BM's telecom, power grid, and organizing some of the other invisible infrastructure. Their work is done before the gates are open to genpop. The horror stories I hear from them every year range from missed payments for equipment and well past due invoices for infrastructure services to miscommunication among the staff that makes it hard for specialized volunteers to do their work (like setup telecom, organize logistics) to the occasional temper tantrum by leadership. Look no further than the utter hell they go through nearly every year negotiating with the BLM and LEOs, entirely of their own doing because they butt heads with the other negotiators. Pro tip: don't antagonize your only two vendors for land and security because your attendees suffer the consequences through harassment and higher ticket prices! More importantly, infrastructure has not gotten that much better over the years despite the sky rocketing ticket prices and attendance. It wasn't until a few years ago, too, that someone with actual experience in logistics and infrastructure was finally put in charge of the work. Also, DPW handbook not for public release? It's right there on the BM website accessible through a Google search [2]. [1] When did portapotties get shade? They should have had them since the 1990s and I don't remember any in 2014. [2] http://dpw.burningman.com/docs/dpwhandbook2016.pdf http://dpw.burningman.com/docs/dpwhandbook2016.pdf
Uhhrrr 10y ago
A lot of the rapid price hikes come from local police and the BLM hiking fees as much as possible over the years.
- akiselev 10y ago
  AFAICT all of these price hikes are a direct result of BM org behavior which has cost the event a lot of goodwill among the federal, state, and county authorities. The event is so big that Walmarts as far out as Reno section off a large part of their stores just for Burners and a significant portion of the Washoe County economy is dependent on the event. BM should have great leverage in negotiations but this leverage has been eroded over the last decade through unprofessional behavior and unnecessary antagonism. The lawsuit against the county police was especially egregious after they couldn't get two negotiators on decent terms with each other into the same room. After that, the police fees went way up and they started trying to recoup their money by any means necessary, including enforcing laws that were never before enforced during the event. BM's principals of radical self reliance and care of the environment set it up to be a great citizen to the land, but relations with the BLM have only gone down hill despite the fact that BLM goes out of its way to support community uses of federal land like Burning Man.
  - mgce 10y ago
    This is a really different perspective than I've ever heard, and I'm intrigued. I've built up a lot of skepticism especially toward the Nevada authorities and their own good will (maybe not so much BLM) after hearing so many anecdotes of them making unreasonable demands and disinterest in even trying to integrate with the broader community. And of course there's the standard argument that while BM should have leverage, they're also so wedded to the site they're essentially a captive audience. And all the authorities know this. So I'm not sure they really have so much natural power. Anyway, I'm open-mindedly curious about your own perspective. But I still remain really skeptical about the natural good will of local law enforcement and especially that there was anything reasonable about them jacking up usage fees (e.g. the new Nevada live entertainment tax), which just feels like a plain old power play fleecing at heart.
splitrocket 10y ago
You know, there is no reason you can't volunteer and instantiate the unfuckotron. Complaining is for spectators.
- throwaway98237 10y ago
  There is always a place for constructive criticism.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Similarly, there is always a place to tell the critics to get off their asses and pitch in effectively.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      I'm sure he appreciates your constructive criticism.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - throwaway98237 10y ago
      From elsewhere in the comments, the author is supposedly a volunteer. So I guess I don't see how this is pertinent here. Also, the tone is a little harsh.
ianamartin 10y ago
>there is no event like Burning Man on the planet. There's another event that happens I'd like to tell you about. It's a place where people get together with friends and strangers to share thoughts, ideas, drugs of one kind or another, and even gifts. It's a place that sometimes does get ruined, and sometimes does not--most often ruined by the organizers themselves. It has a lot on common with burning man. There are people there who will agree with your attitudes about art, music, culture, and technology. There are people who will disagree so hard they want to punch you in the face. We even burn things down--sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. It's a great event, and I speak for everyone involved when I suggest that you participate. It's called real fucking life. Feel free to join us any time.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  I actually enjoyed this post and voted it up. Provocative, probably too harsh, but one of those rare comments that are incredibly unpopular, far too snarky and yet made me think and showed a lot of insight. I'd take the downvotes as a job well done. I don't suggest you do it again though.
- lintiness 10y ago
  does real life have any of these sparkle ponies the burning man savants are so afraid of? they sound cool.
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    NYC has sparkle ponies pretty much year around. You learn to ignore them after a while. I'm from a pretty small farm town in Texas. What you learn after a while in a big city is that anyone who is trying to get your attention is trying to take your money. Sometimes it's a sparkle pony hooker; sometimes it's Comcast. Other times it's someone who went to burning man "when it was cool." Every individual I've ever met who went to burning man was irritating, broke, begging for money, and full of "good" business ideas that were either "stolen" by huge megacorporations or just straight up idiotic business ideas "that would totally work if people weren't so close minded." Whatever. My experience is anecdotal, and I'm not going to judge 8000 people based on my interactions with a couple of dozen. Wait, no, that's not true. I'm totally judging all of them. You want a real human experience with unsanity and sharing and creativity and ugliness and real human stuff and burning things? Go home to where you live. Be poor there. Hell, be moderately wealthy there. Look, I'm about as in favor of arts and philosophy as a person can be. I spent 20 years as a professional violinist before I got in to technology. I spent years teaching music theory and history. Now that I have a better living as a developer, I volunteer for a dance company in Brooklyn, and I run an El Sisteme program in the Philippines with my brother. I get it. There are more important things in the world than material wealth, and exploring yourself and other people in a non-traditional way is valuable. But this is ridiculous. There are better and more honest ways to do this than burning man. BM pisses me off because it's a waste of resources. All those people in the desert doing whatever it is they do is person-power that could be directed at a worthy cause that could accomplish the same thing. Aside from my volunteer work I write 8 checks a year, for a thousand bucks a piece. I give them explicitly to the kinds of orgs that I don't work with on a daily or weekly basis. I give my time to orgs I know and love and care about. I give my money to those that I don't. You want to do something good for you? You want to find out who you truly are? You want confidence to know that you're doing okay? You want to find out if your ideas have legs? Spend a day with the homeless. Go to a foreign country and teach their poor what you already know. Spend your Burning Man money on something that is worthwhile and will actually teach you something about yourself and your fellow man. I really, really, really strongly despise Burning Man people. You don't actually want good for yourself or for others; you just want to feel like you are good to yourself and others. Fuck you, I hate you all. I hope that a hater on HN has now ruined burning man. The best and most intellectually honest thing BM could do right now is shut the whole thing down. Burn it down. But that will never happen. And we all know why. BM is a business now. Businesses never commit suicide. Only people do. Maybe think about that the next time you want to go to burning man. Just sit on a phone waiting for someone who has a problem that's so bad he or she wants to end it. None of you will ever do that because you are extreme and insane narcissists. We are fucked. We live in a world where it's sort of okay for David Foster Wallace to kill himself, but it's also okay for idiots to go to burning man to "find" shit. To put it the way the kids do: "I can't even . . ."
chris_wot 10y ago
My goodness, so what you are saying is that Burning Man is ruining Burning Man? Someone really should stop Burning Man from participating. I mean, someone needs to stop Burning Man from being destroyed and what better way of doing this than by stopping Burning Man itself?

hashkb 10y ago

> no event like burning man on the planet Check out regional burns. They're smaller, but many are not ruined yet.

bluejekyll 10y ago
You just ruined them. ;)
akiselev 10y ago
I've been to a few of those and while they're fun, they're only like the modern Burning Man because of association ans they don't have the same scale or funding. Burning Flipside, in Texas, was really really fun though. For those on the west coast, Fourth of Juplaya is the big gathering of Burners early in the summer but there isn't really a sense of community and everyone is really spread out.
- errantspark 10y ago
  SHHHHHHH, don't tell anyone. You'll ruin it.
happypants23 10y ago
Ha. I've gone to AfrikaBurn a few times (largest burn after Burning Man). It started circa 2007 and the old-timers are already complaining that its ruined. Also juicy politics like this: https://medium.com/@kurtsiegfried/fear-and-loathing-at-afrikaburn-987f373e43eb https://medium.com/@kurtsiegfried/fear-and-loathing-at-afrik...
- kbenson 10y ago
  That is perhaps the most densely phrase-ridden rant I've ever encountered. it's worth reading just to marvel at how much can be implied while saying so little definitively. The author effortlessly weaves idioms and references to create a narrative of abuse, which makes it easy to relate to the circumstances alluded to. It's masterful work, because even though I know nothing about any specific details, and this leaves ,me wanting to know those details before I take it as gospel, the truth is that a few months from now if AfrikaBurn came up in conversation, what I would likely remember is that I had read that it has real organizational and sociological problems. So, I guess that's goal achieved for this author, no matter how much at this point I want verification before accepting this.
  - danharaj 10y ago
    A masterclass in the art of vagueblogging
  - jzwinck 10y ago
    You're right. I proved it to myself by reading the whole thing replacing AfrikaBurn with IBM. It really works; e.g.: > By sleight-of-hand and the wholesale and completely unnecessary import of an unwieldy American pop culture franchise, a group of creatively blocked shadow artists, bureaucrats and box tickers are making an elaborate and specious lunge at celebrity through curation-by-funding. Employing savvy redistribution of money, they stand on the shoulders of established, older artists and their fashionable, younger counterparts, thus hoping to crown themselves the fairy godmothers of local pop culture. In short, involvement in IBM appears to be nothing more than a cynical exercise in associative branding for themselves and, in some cases, the products they promote in the real world. With apologies to IBM. You can use Monsanto or Tata Motors if you prefer.
kbenson 10y ago
> many are not ruined yet. From my "recently having read the article but never have been to burning man" mind, that makes it sound like it's just not succeeding.
Fomite 10y ago
So what you're telling me is next year, regional burns ruined burning man.
catscratch 10y ago
http://regionals.burningman.org/ http://regionals.burningman.org/ The map in that would probably overlay nicely with a global wealth map: https://cdn.credit-suisse.com/articles/news-and-expertise/2015/10/en/global-wealth-in-2015-underlying-trends-remain-positive/_jcr_content/content/image/image.revampimg.714.high.png/1460804002877.png https://cdn.credit-suisse.com/articles/news-and-expertise/20...

John23832 10y ago

Maybe I'm just ignorant to BM, but what does BLM have to do with this?

woah 10y ago
The Bureau of Land Management, aka the original BLM
- John23832 10y ago
  Gotcha, that makes more sense.
- l33tbro 10y ago
  Yeah you might want to spell that acronym out next time. BLM certainly has a bigger association for Black Lives Matter with most people, I would think. Was equally baffled.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dpwgroupie 10y ago

You've probably never read the DPW handbook, well you're not supposed to, it's not for public release. The Borg staff organizations know what they're doing, and they do a great job. You don't ever notice it, because by the time you arrive it's already there. DPW and Gayte have worked hard to make everything run seamlessly. The portopotties have shade so they're not as hot and gross, there's a huge power grid, lines have been running smoothly for entrance and exodus the last three years. Arctica makes sure that everyone can have fresh food and cold drinks. HEAT ran 12 hour shifts 24 hours a day to make sure all the art projects could finish. Sign crew make sure that every street corner is marked so that ambulances and emergency services will always have a point of reference (that's what those pvc posts are for). There's many more departments that work hard to make sure that staff and volunteers are fed, taken care of, and that safety is first. The borg is operating in their best interests, but the departments that make burning man happen work really hard to always improve year after year. So when that crusty DPW person flips you off, try saying, "thank you for your work".

hinkley 10y ago
When I was in high school I belonged to a club that ran two events every year. The spring event pulling in people from a 100 mile radius, the fall one from two states away. Other organizations in bigger nearby towns had a wider draw but for a town of 100,000 we were pretty well known. When I joined the same guy had been president of the club for years. And it wasn't until after I went to college that he retired, mostly from the grumbling. The fall event was run by a local business but manned by us and workers from another local business (the owner of the latter is now the mayor). And of course without the excellent town and county infrastructure services, few would have come that far. It wasn't until I grew up and moved away and joined other clubs that I realized how much hard and smart work these people were doing, and how tremendously hard it is to replicate. When an event almost goes right, it's easy to forget that because you only see the thing that went wrong.
akiselev 10y ago
I have no doubt they work really hard and believe in what they do but Burning Man succeeds every year because of the attendees and volunteers, despite the BM org best efforts to throw a wrench in the works at nearly every stage. I'm not talking about portapotties [1] or road signs or exodus (I don't expect BM org to magically expand the two lane road from Gerlach into a megahighway anyway). DPW does a great job with what they're given by management. I camp with a lot of volunteers, former employees, and people in charge of setting up BM's telecom, power grid, and organizing some of the other invisible infrastructure. Their work is done before the gates are open to genpop. The horror stories I hear from them every year range from missed payments for equipment and well past due invoices for infrastructure services to miscommunication among the staff that makes it hard for specialized volunteers to do their work (like setup telecom, organize logistics) to the occasional temper tantrum by leadership. Look no further than the utter hell they go through nearly every year negotiating with the BLM and LEOs, entirely of their own doing because they butt heads with the other negotiators. Pro tip: don't antagonize your only two vendors for land and security because your attendees suffer the consequences through harassment and higher ticket prices! More importantly, infrastructure has not gotten that much better over the years despite the sky rocketing ticket prices and attendance. It wasn't until a few years ago, too, that someone with actual experience in logistics and infrastructure was finally put in charge of the work. Also, DPW handbook not for public release? It's right there on the BM website accessible through a Google search [2]. [1] When did portapotties get shade? They should have had them since the 1990s and I don't remember any in 2014. [2] http://dpw.burningman.com/docs/dpwhandbook2016.pdf http://dpw.burningman.com/docs/dpwhandbook2016.pdf

Uhhrrr 10y ago

A lot of the rapid price hikes come from local police and the BLM hiking fees as much as possible over the years.

akiselev 10y ago
AFAICT all of these price hikes are a direct result of BM org behavior which has cost the event a lot of goodwill among the federal, state, and county authorities. The event is so big that Walmarts as far out as Reno section off a large part of their stores just for Burners and a significant portion of the Washoe County economy is dependent on the event. BM should have great leverage in negotiations but this leverage has been eroded over the last decade through unprofessional behavior and unnecessary antagonism. The lawsuit against the county police was especially egregious after they couldn't get two negotiators on decent terms with each other into the same room. After that, the police fees went way up and they started trying to recoup their money by any means necessary, including enforcing laws that were never before enforced during the event. BM's principals of radical self reliance and care of the environment set it up to be a great citizen to the land, but relations with the BLM have only gone down hill despite the fact that BLM goes out of its way to support community uses of federal land like Burning Man.
- mgce 10y ago
  This is a really different perspective than I've ever heard, and I'm intrigued. I've built up a lot of skepticism especially toward the Nevada authorities and their own good will (maybe not so much BLM) after hearing so many anecdotes of them making unreasonable demands and disinterest in even trying to integrate with the broader community. And of course there's the standard argument that while BM should have leverage, they're also so wedded to the site they're essentially a captive audience. And all the authorities know this. So I'm not sure they really have so much natural power. Anyway, I'm open-mindedly curious about your own perspective. But I still remain really skeptical about the natural good will of local law enforcement and especially that there was anything reasonable about them jacking up usage fees (e.g. the new Nevada live entertainment tax), which just feels like a plain old power play fleecing at heart.

splitrocket 10y ago

You know, there is no reason you can't volunteer and instantiate the unfuckotron. Complaining is for spectators.

throwaway98237 10y ago
There is always a place for constructive criticism.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Similarly, there is always a place to tell the critics to get off their asses and pitch in effectively.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    I'm sure he appreciates your constructive criticism.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway98237 10y ago
    From elsewhere in the comments, the author is supposedly a volunteer. So I guess I don't see how this is pertinent here. Also, the tone is a little harsh.

ianamartin 10y ago

>there is no event like Burning Man on the planet. There's another event that happens I'd like to tell you about. It's a place where people get together with friends and strangers to share thoughts, ideas, drugs of one kind or another, and even gifts. It's a place that sometimes does get ruined, and sometimes does not--most often ruined by the organizers themselves. It has a lot on common with burning man. There are people there who will agree with your attitudes about art, music, culture, and technology. There are people who will disagree so hard they want to punch you in the face. We even burn things down--sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. It's a great event, and I speak for everyone involved when I suggest that you participate. It's called real fucking life. Feel free to join us any time.

chris_wot 10y ago
I actually enjoyed this post and voted it up. Provocative, probably too harsh, but one of those rare comments that are incredibly unpopular, far too snarky and yet made me think and showed a lot of insight. I'd take the downvotes as a job well done. I don't suggest you do it again though.
lintiness 10y ago
does real life have any of these sparkle ponies the burning man savants are so afraid of? they sound cool.
- ianamartin 10y ago
  NYC has sparkle ponies pretty much year around. You learn to ignore them after a while. I'm from a pretty small farm town in Texas. What you learn after a while in a big city is that anyone who is trying to get your attention is trying to take your money. Sometimes it's a sparkle pony hooker; sometimes it's Comcast. Other times it's someone who went to burning man "when it was cool." Every individual I've ever met who went to burning man was irritating, broke, begging for money, and full of "good" business ideas that were either "stolen" by huge megacorporations or just straight up idiotic business ideas "that would totally work if people weren't so close minded." Whatever. My experience is anecdotal, and I'm not going to judge 8000 people based on my interactions with a couple of dozen. Wait, no, that's not true. I'm totally judging all of them. You want a real human experience with unsanity and sharing and creativity and ugliness and real human stuff and burning things? Go home to where you live. Be poor there. Hell, be moderately wealthy there. Look, I'm about as in favor of arts and philosophy as a person can be. I spent 20 years as a professional violinist before I got in to technology. I spent years teaching music theory and history. Now that I have a better living as a developer, I volunteer for a dance company in Brooklyn, and I run an El Sisteme program in the Philippines with my brother. I get it. There are more important things in the world than material wealth, and exploring yourself and other people in a non-traditional way is valuable. But this is ridiculous. There are better and more honest ways to do this than burning man. BM pisses me off because it's a waste of resources. All those people in the desert doing whatever it is they do is person-power that could be directed at a worthy cause that could accomplish the same thing. Aside from my volunteer work I write 8 checks a year, for a thousand bucks a piece. I give them explicitly to the kinds of orgs that I don't work with on a daily or weekly basis. I give my time to orgs I know and love and care about. I give my money to those that I don't. You want to do something good for you? You want to find out who you truly are? You want confidence to know that you're doing okay? You want to find out if your ideas have legs? Spend a day with the homeless. Go to a foreign country and teach their poor what you already know. Spend your Burning Man money on something that is worthwhile and will actually teach you something about yourself and your fellow man. I really, really, really strongly despise Burning Man people. You don't actually want good for yourself or for others; you just want to feel like you are good to yourself and others. Fuck you, I hate you all. I hope that a hater on HN has now ruined burning man. The best and most intellectually honest thing BM could do right now is shut the whole thing down. Burn it down. But that will never happen. And we all know why. BM is a business now. Businesses never commit suicide. Only people do. Maybe think about that the next time you want to go to burning man. Just sit on a phone waiting for someone who has a problem that's so bad he or she wants to end it. None of you will ever do that because you are extreme and insane narcissists. We are fucked. We live in a world where it's sort of okay for David Foster Wallace to kill himself, but it's also okay for idiots to go to burning man to "find" shit. To put it the way the kids do: "I can't even . . ."

chris_wot 10y ago

My goodness, so what you are saying is that Burning Man is ruining Burning Man? Someone really should stop Burning Man from participating. I mean, someone needs to stop Burning Man from being destroyed and what better way of doing this than by stopping Burning Man itself?