Burning Man

glastonbury and sonar can have some decent music and don't have inflated reputations as proof of concept of anarcho-capitalism

you're not allowed to buy or sell things, but fair point on the music

I feel a lot of the people posting above have never gone. Honestly, I felt similarly before I went in 2011, but I chose to go without expectations or cynicism. One of the best times of my life and gave me a creative energy I still channel to this day, hence my defensiveness. I also love watching and going to concerts and professional sports games so I'm used to being around large crowds non sober people sprinkled with oligarchs and massive dickheads.

Should we make fun of all the regional burns too?

I mean, sure?

xp I have tons of friends who go and even work there but it is def not for me, I do see the positives (although there are also negatives) and tbh nobody who is a regular there seemed the least bit put out by the weather issues

if they burned a giant straw goat at it these lads would be all over it tbf

OK yeah then I would go

i dont offer this as a criticism to be clear if anything its advice

it's always good advice to work in a big straw goat to burn somehow

Definitely don't go there for the music, but you can find some good shit. Those Tycho sunrise DJ sets were nice. My first year there I was putting on Tesla coil concerts with music I composed!

Jeez I guess I'll never leave the house and just hate the world, okay? 

thanks for understanding.

i particularly appreciated the logic of "you can't judge a ding dong infested ecologically irresponsible rave because Venice was created 1600 years ago"

if they burned a giant straw goat at it these lads would be all over it tbf

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Wednesday, September 6, 2023 4:40 PM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

if half the people wanted to burn the man but the other half didnt

are you going to burning man
im going to man
*recognize each other as enemies*

friend who went said she felt like it was people searching for religion and it kinda had the vibe but ultimately fell short cause it was too much entertainment, modern life

Big Devil Sticks thanks god every night for Burning Man

silicon valley elite getting into drugs is def a very weird bad vibes situation, and now grover norquist and that evil lawyer too i guess

this Doug rushkoff book about the emergence of that kind of thing is pretty lol

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberia_(book)

When you consider so many of those guys have disruptions that are evil not good, it really does lend bad vibes to the whole no rules nature of the thing

thanks for understanding.

Likewise. I see scant nuance in the hate here. The same arguments can be used to tear down most of the shit everyone celebrates in this forum. It's very reductive. Perhaps I'm coming off overly optimistic, and trust me, there's a shit ton wrong with the event and many people interpret some toxic BS from it, but you can say the same for so many things in our lives that I feel much of the hate is projection of frustration around other shit (inequality, tech hubris, bs hypocritical libertarian ideologies) that it overlooks a lot of positivity. I'm just trying to balance the discourse. But I guess I'm online - in a world that has lost nuance or the ability to avoid putting a thing into a single bucket.

xp Bohemian Grove for the crypto bro's

And let's be clear - the inequality, tech hubris and much of what's wrong with contemporary society isn't the fault of Burning Man - it's the fault of a lot of other things, including neo-liberalism, eroding democracy and online misinformation (among many, many other things including basic human greed), but not Burning Man per se. Burning Man is just showing the symptoms of the sickness in a more dramatic way that makes it a very easy target.

If anything the event exhibits some political changes we'd all like: universal health care, collective infrastructure, and an economy focused on giving and community. The fact a number of people subvert or misinterpret these ideals and take away a toxic, unrealistic world view from the event doesn't mean the event is a bad idea. Part of the issue I feel is after 2012, tickets sold out and the event became a haves vs have nots that created more explicit hierarchy and exclusion.

My first impressions with the event back in 2011 made me feel it was closer to something like Pride in that it allowed a safe space for people to celebrate and explore their personal identities and express themselves in ways regular society wouldn't normally allow. I thought that was pretty profound at the time. But whatever I guess. I feel I'm talking to a wall here so I'll just bow out.

nah I hear ya, another friend posted similar:

I'm usually the first one to talk shit about Burning Man (especially when I am on Playa) but dang I am getting kinda worn down by all the people ripping on a place that they don't seem to know anything about.

I get that it has been all over the news, and headlines about Diplo and Chris Rock hitchhiking off of Playa are gonna grab attention. I get that in our current global climate change reality, it feels really good to look at anyone who does something that we don't personally do, and judge them for their use of resources (i.e. see literally any aggressively child-free Facebook group...) And sure, it's real fun to dunk on the obscenely wealthy.

Like... sure, a decent amount of wealthy tech bros go to BRC, but here's the thing: they are certainly not the majority. There is a large, diverse community of people who make that event happen, and while the whole premise can be a bit stupid and shallow, it really does have its moments.

The one thing I do know, is that all of my friends who are currently out there are gonna count this year as one for the records. More than anything, this experience will have brought a lot of people together and, in the long run, will be remembered fondly.

I have several friends who were and still are evangelical about Burning Man, but they mostly went there in the 90s/00s and they've all gotten older now

One of my best friends stayed with me this summer from the east coast on his way up to the Bohemian Grove. He's been a member for many years as part of the talent (the performers). I've grilled him about what his experience there is like, but still don't have a complete picture. It sounds to me like a glorified boy scout camp for old republican men, be he assures me that's not the full story

okay, so please shut the fuck up about it?

a fake TAZ— a concept invented by a pedophile, mind you

an ecological disaster in a fragile environment

a collection of some of the most annoying, rich, and overprivileged people on the planet being “served”
by fellow “attendees” who are mostly spun wooks or alcoholic former punks— the “diversity” is absolute fucking false, there’s a class system, otherwise people i know wouldn’t be bartending or driving huge fucking ice trucks to the middle of the goddamn desert so some assholes can have ice cold drinks

some of the most godawful “art” i’ve ever seen, spectacle over nuance every time

overwhelmingly terrible music. Tycho is ambient for people who can afford Aesop skin creme.

good post!

okay, so please shut the fuck up about it?

this is the Burning Man thread

the “diversity” is absolute fucking false, there’s a class system, otherwise people i know wouldn’t be bartending or driving huge fucking ice trucks to the middle of the goddamn desert so some assholes can have ice cold drinks

it's true, only 1,000 people at Burning Man have fun, the other 69,000 are lowly peons.

yeah, this is the appropriate venue to discuss Burning Man

the funniest thing that’s happened in this thread is octobeard comparing Burning Man to cities that have been around for literal millennia. talk
about hubris.

one of the biggest DUDs of all time. I should note that I haven't been, but every thing I've ever heard about it makes me cringe.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, August 11, 2003 10:14 AM (twenty years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Spencer set the tone twenty years ago, we're just sticking to it

burning man and gathering of the jugglos should merge

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/49/1e/07/491e074cfe06fd4e65b92355bd02c96f--burning-man-clowns.jpg

fuckin' magnates, how do they work?

the one person who really tried to sell me on burning man irl kept using the term "radical self expression" and like you gotta know your audience lol that doesnt sounds too good to me, also everything is so dusty

having said that i bet its probably fun to go and maybe even cool, a big party if youre into that sort of thing, but a lot of the shit you see from afar is pretty dopey and maybe even indicative of having a bad world view, i suspect the tech overlord aspect is overplayed tho, its not really their party theyre just there to soak in the vibes

its kind of gen x carnival coded alt clowns burlesque and so forth being a dilettante for pagan shit

I suspect it was good but is now "over"

ah well whatre you gonna do, time to launch the drones

getting like really really angry about it seems about as forced as evangelising it tbh the correct distance is poking fun at it in a disaster year and thinking "lame" once in any other year

let me be clear -- i hate this thing only to the extent that it's cool

the funniest thing that’s happened in this thread is octobeard comparing Burning Man to cities that have been around for literal millennia

No - that was an absurdist and caricaturist response to the initial argument that Black Rock City is "hubris". Like - No. Fucking. Shit. Because everything we do is wrt to basic civilization is environmentally altering hubris. Burning Man is minuscule and pointless in comparison. That entire argument was stupid and still is; the fact mine comes across as absurd was intentional because the original argument is essentially pointless and exposed more bias and emotional rage than any constructive debate.

Your points are literally unhinged subjective biases (the music and art sucks boo!) and reductive exaggerations of a minority of some of the most annoying attendees. Why don't you just leave this thread if you want to stop engaging with the discussion of BM in the thread for it here? You sound like some Fox News watcher complaining about liberals in SF, honestly.

“(i.e. see literally any aggressively child-free Facebook group...)”

wth is this

i hate it so much it goes way past cool but then my hatred becomes so powerful that you start to think hey yeah maybe hes right we should start a rival festival... on fire guy

I’ve been to Autonomous Mutant Festival— one of the original splinters of OG Burning Man—- DEMF (aka Movement), Honcho, and a few others. I think all of those are pretty wasteful, too, fwiw, tho none are at the scale of Burning Man. I wouldn’t go to a music festival again, mostly because large crowds and/or camping around thousands of people just isn’t very me any longer.

my main problem with Burning Man, in my heart of hearts, is that its aspirations and intentions seem completely contradicted by its reality. it makes me recall the song “Halloween” by the Dead Kennedys.

Your points are literally unhinged subjective biases (the music and art sucks boo!)

― octobeard, Wednesday, September 6, 2023 8:53 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

honestly the best argument against it tbf

true hubris is believing that one can and should replace all technology with steam technology. But I don't think anyone at burning man believes this.

It really is a trash event now (from 2019)

An individual Burner’s footprint is about two-thirds of a ton for the week, twice that of an average American. But Burners aren’t average, and they’re becoming less average every year. The median personal income of attendees went from $51,100 in 2013 to $71,500 in 2019.

Burners are famously good at leaving little to no trash on the playa (principle number eight: “Leave no trace”), but that’s cracking under the stress too. This year, the team that sweeps the playa to ensure it’s truly clean before inspection by the Bureau of Land Management was shocked by the amount of trash it found, attributing the mess partly to punishing winds and dust storms, but also excessive heat and fatigue. It’s telling that the thing they found the most of was tent stakes. Tent campers were just done.

You might be wondering why we should care about an 80,000-person totally optional festival and its first-world problems, when the ancestral homes of millions of people are fast becoming unlivable due to climate change. People without access to air-conditioning die every year in Pakistan, but there was only one death at Burning Man in 2022—a middle-aged man had a heart attack. But if a collection of some of the most capitalized, connected, and tech-forward people on the planet can’t figure this out, what hope is there for the rest of us?

i went to a country fair last year and they had a exhibition of all these early machines with the old guys whos hobby it was to restore them, it was pretty cool they should get that at burning man

at that tho i’ve unbookmarked this thread— i can’t apologize for my bile because i’m not sorry for it, but as some have pointed out, better to just put it out of my head after a hearty chuckle

I suspect it was good but is now "over"

Just unfashionable. Like living in SF. Or having nuanced discussions online that don't involve snap judgements on wholesale groups of people over the actions of a few.

I will also openly confess I haven't been since 2015. But was building an immersive sound sculpture to bring out in 2020 that was derailed by the pandemic and still haven't been back. I just really dislike a pile-on on something that really isn't the "cause of our ills". It's like y'all are taking the bait.