No Stupid Questions

Burning Man 'promotes' anti-consumerism and communal effort, however attending requires significant financial resources and costs that can and do exclude (most) people, it's living hyprocracy, and an excellent example of capitalism corrupting grass roots ideals. honestly is an absolute joke of a festival.

Some of the worst people I've worked with are "burners".

There's apparently a private jet at burning man this year that was taking off and landing constantly so that people could fuck on the jet - it's fall of Rome style excess in a broken world where most people's basic needs are not met on an enormous scale.

Your statement is fairly tone deaf to the basic objective reality of the "party", OP. The frustrated people at the bottom are feeling a bit of catharsis in the money burning factory closing for a day while they starve and watch.

aside from the obvious "rich people exploiting the environment with their hippy party that costs $200 for their cheapest tickets," I saw a video online that brought up a good point that I never considered. The cost of lumber has increased exponentially in the past 3 years alone, jumping to nearly $1700 per 1000 feet at its peak in 2021, but staying between $400 and $600 per 1000 feet in recent months (still high compared to say 10 years ago.) And these people are buying tens of thousands of feet of lumber solely to burn it away in the middle of nowhere where there's little vegetation to absorb the excess CO2 waste. That, along with the climate change protesters being police brutalized just before the event, really puts a sour taste in people's mouths. Especially in a time where "once in a lifetime" weather events seem to be back-to-back.

economic data from: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber

Burning Man may be the epitome of the many optimistic and maybe naive qualities of the 90s that were co-opted and exploited in the early 2000s, and turned into the very things they were built to protest against - another being the free and open internet

Because it's a festival in the middle of the fucking desert. It's an utterly ridiculous place to have it and totally extravagant.

They'll go there claiming there to be going I to some kind of getting away from civilisation, hippie commune thing but the amount of effort and infrastructure to make that environment survivable is ridiculous they actually doing more damage to the environment by being there than if they just stayed in the city.

No one's glad someone died but their death has nothing to do with the ultimate problem of them all being there, and without being too macabre, people die music festivals all of the time, usually because of drugs. Most music festivals are held in a field, where it's at least reasonably possible to have basic infrastructure without huge expenses of money and effort.

I’ve been to burning man. I sit a little bit on both sides of the fence having not felt like I totally fit in there when I went, but also understanding the original mindset behind it.

At this point, I feel the backlash against Burning Man generally is a bit overblown. These folks are at a festival (yeah burners, I called it a festival because that’s the word we use for such things in the English language) and they’re having a good time. Who cares. Most folks who go have good intentions and just want to connect and share something. Many artists work for years and months, for free, to have their pieces featured. Some of that art is incredible! My favorite parts though were literally just an astronomy camp where I looked through a pretty big telescope, held some billion year old meteor fragments in my hand, and listened to hours of lectures from science nerds about the cosmos. I also watched a magic show and got fed bacon by some drunk guy at his camp at 7 am who just wanted company. I personally havent drank at burning man, but it is a party. There are all manner of things at burning man, anything you might want and some things you might not… from talks on how to build a sustainable green energy house to orgy tents to camps offering free ice cream and French toast.

On the other hand, burners can take this shit a bit too seriously and get wrapped up in the experience to the point of being annoying. One guy in my camp scolded me for asking too much about his normal life. He was a tech worker and apparently wanted to pretend that he wasn’t when he was at burning man. How ridiculous to think standing in the desert should mean you can’t talk about your actual life. Another time I pulled out my camera (aka phone) to take a photo of some art and some random chick yelled at me to put my phone away. As if we all bought DSLRs and Polaroids for this event because it’s more authentic that way, and as if the folks that did totally aren’t going to go home and put it on Instagram anyway. There were plenty of women just posing on the playa for their photographer “friends.” I doubt they all just put them in a family photo album for the memories.

That said, Burning Man is a unique event and most folks are just trying to share and view some of the most unique art in the world and connect with others. At my age, I generally find most festivals annoying and burning man has plenty of people to be annoyed at, but it is what it is and frankly I don’t know that it deserves more hate than something like Bonaroo or Coachella. At least Burning Man is full of folks trying to be more than mere passive consumers of entertainment. The mandate is for you to be a participant. God forbid you attend an event where you’re asked to do more than consume, but rather give, anything you want or feel others could benefit from.

If there were 10 other events like burning man, I’d say we should look for the best one, but it is the only event like this. That said, as time goes on, it needs to change. Burning the art has to stop, for instance. Also, some of the more snobbish cultural aspects of the event could die off and I wouldn’t cry.

Not sure I’ll ever go back, but its mostly because I’m too old for this shit and seriously get off my lawn. But, I got the idea and, I won’t hate on others who feel drawn to it, unless they’re insufferable.

Most people don’t even think about burning man at all.

And well, the people of the internet tend to be less fond of more wealthy people, like those that can afford to spend thousands to party in the desert. I may not want them to die just because they went to burning man, but I will laugh at the world essentially raining on their parade.

A lot of the time, people hear about Burning Man in the context of which privileged asshole grifter attended it. Elizabeth Holmes, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, etc other billionaires or influencers... And it is described as "tech bros' favorite party" in the media.

So, given that impression of it, I can see how the default reaction to it failing is unsympathetic.

Well far be it from me to judge anyone at a music festival but I think for many burning man has some bourgeoisie, fake hippie sorta connotations?

I actually think a lot is the opposite. If you think an event like this, attended by the likes of Bezos and Musk, is countercultural, or even “brings positivity into the world”, I have a beautiful bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Of course most Burners have jobs, it’s a techbro’s dream. Plus, tickets are more expensive than they were in the old days, so real hippies can’t go. If people want to laugh at the suffering of rich people who cosplay as revolutionary, I’m generally ok with that. One big caveat: I’m very sorry someone died, and I don’t think mocking that’s cool, especially if we don’t know anything about them.

It’s just a playground for the riche to do a music and drug festival pretend poor style. Or maybe it has something to do with a bunch of those hippies that nearly killed climate protestors blocking the road on their way in.

Every Burner I’ve ever met has been one of the most entitled, out of touch, morons I’ve ever had the displeasure of talking to. Let’s see where their “radical self reliance” gets them now.

Fuck these rich twats

i dont care what happens to rich people

I'm just surprised at the sheer stupidity of those people. There have been pictures on the net, showing the festival area completely submerged just a few days before the start. Yet, they still moved there.

At that point, when they noticed that the mud was knee deep, they could have left. They decided to stay.

Now there is an emergency involving 70k idiots who put themselves wilfully in a dangerous place without thinking.

I got shit for this in another thread, but I will stand by it- you do not go into the desert without checking the weather report, and if it says rain, light rain, heavy rain, sprinkles, doesn't matter, you do not go into the desert. These people did not do the most basic bit of safety you could do.

Bunch of people here are talking about who goes to burning man. So just to be a bit objective, here's a burning man census they've been doing for the past decade

https://blackrockcitycensus.org/

You’re not traveling in the wrong circles. Come to a VC fund dinner in September where junior VCs and 28-year-old “mortgage disrupter” CEOs brag about the air-conditioned plug-and-play camps they spent tens of thousands on, and play wink-wink with each other about all of the fun they had.

I’m a multiple-time BM vet, but it’s mostly an expensive, bureaucratized drug party for tourists now.

It’s perfectly fine to goof on it as it sinks into a physical and moral quagmire. Forgive a poorly scaled analogy, but your logic is the NRA’s logic when there’s a mass shooting: “Now, when everyone’s attention is focused, is not the time to highlight the underlying issues.”

This thread is wild. I suspect most of you who seem completely positive you're right to judge thousands of people and what they deserve would be very indignant and angry if someone lumped you in with a category of people you somehow are tangentially related to.

It's kind of depressing. I thought Lemmy wasn't a wasteland of humanity like reddit was, but if I was only going by this thread I'd have to conclude it definitely is not a damned bit better than reddit.

People are children and repeat what they hear. 15 years ago, I would spout the same nonsense about burning man because of what I read on digg/Reddit from the same voices you hear now. I then met a friend who convinced me to go and I had an absolute blast.

For the vast majority of people in the US, let alone the world, attending the event is almost impossible due to cost, time, materials, etc. - it’s much easier for people that live nearby and most people within driving distance, the views of burning man will be more in line with your views - nuanced and reasonable. If you have no experience and no contact with the regular folks who attend, it’s super easy to bucket people into all these groups.

The reasoning about waste and frivolity is total bullshit — don’t tel me your bullshit vacation to Murtle Beach is anymore eco friendly. Or your plane ride to Bangkok to become more worldly is “green”. Burning man is an event, a vacation. I went many times as a student, spending only about $2000 all in. It’s a relatively economical way to have a blast for a week.

Holy crap, I just checked the actual numbers and their mortality rate is lower than the average in the population, they're doing fine

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm#:~:text=Age%2Dspecific%20rates%20increased%2010.1,44%20(248.0%20to%20287.9).

strong morals, personally and financially responsible, a career. Upstanding members of society for sure.

These are extremely generic platitudes that could apply to just about anyone.

Which morals specifically?

What's your definition of "financially responsible"? Because that's frequently a watered down way of saying "well-off" while trying to attribute it their character and not their situation.

"Upstanding member of society" is outright meaningless without context. That's an argument you hear from the defense in criminal trial.

So why are we supposed to take these hypothetical friends as evidence of anything?

Strong MORALS?!?!?

it's just an us based festival, why do you make it sound as if its a larger than life event.

Entirely ignoring who is at burning man or why, I honestly think there needs to be a line somewhere for sympathy. If you truck yourself out into the desert and things go tits up, well, shit happens. That's the risk you took.

I say this as a person who used to ride motorcycles, rock climb, and go backpacking. If shit ever went down I wouldn't have expected any sympathy. I put myself in those risky situations, and there's just plain gotta be a line for personal responsibility.

With all that being said, when such a massive group of people continuely take the same risk over and over, it's kinda funny when they finally get bit. It's the same reason COVID denires getting COVID is funny.

It used to be about spirituality and the rest including hard drugs, alcohol, and social media bringing in that crowd has ruined it permanently.