I doubt it'll get very far with this crowd, but my good friend from uni has been trying to drag me there for 15 fecking years. Every video and story I see feels super cringe. Am I missing anything?
Hopefully not like used dope syringes and shit? I use iv opiates and would never leave that shit for someone else to pick up
I think this is more a MDMA / psychedelics kind of crowd rather than opiates but I might be wrong.
Wait until you hear about the poop tents. Buy cheap 1 person tent with a pvc bucket and a lid, often times the tent and bucket are just left upon the conclusion of the event.
I’ve got to ask, can you talk more about your experience with this? Because I personally know a lot of people who are part of the cleanup crew for burning man every year and they are absolutely fanatical about the “leave no trace” stuff. The cleanup after the event lasts for a month after it ends.
Unless they’re all lying to me I have a real hard time believing that they are leaving massive piles of trash behind. I’ve seen people get shit for years because they brought an outfit that shed glitter on the playa.
Of course, you’re 100% spot on about the water usage. And don’t get me started on the CO2 emissions .
If only all 70k people who attented thought like this
I think this is the crux of the matter, right here. No matter what steps the org takes (and I don’t think they’re taking enough) 70k people are going to generate a lot of trash. To an extent, the fact that the BM org is trying to rely on the visitors to practice “leave no trace” is creating a situation where everyone packs their trash out of burning man, and then dumps it in places like Reno at the first opportunity, if it doesn’t just fall out of their pickup trucks or whatever.
This lets people like my friends feel like they have successfully cleaned up the scene after the event, when the trash is really just elsewhere. Of course, I’m sure the people who run burning man know all of this, but still don’t want to spend the money needed to create some sort of waste management infrastructure that operates during the event.
All in all, it seems perfect for a party that’s attended by people like Peter Thiel.
Burning Mans’ trash issue is a structural problem not a volunteer one
Damn, why do all the problems have to be large structural ones, that allow for such diffusion of responsibility? Shit sucks, lol. Anyway thanks for talking about this, I had no idea of the scale of the issue.
I lived in the bay for years, which is where a bulk of burners come from. Whatever counter culture spirit it once had (shout out to the true freaks of gen x), it has been co-opted by tech money and clout seekers and people with no :zizek: ideology. The best part of burning man is all the bars being empty in Oakland/sf for the week
burning man functions as a release valve for revolutionary energy and as a way to split the quasileft by class: take the people who know something's wrong with the world but still have a little money and convince them that the answer is to isolate themselves in the desert and dance naked for elon musk for 2 weeks a year
it sucks, it's bad, burn something closer to civilization instead
Everything doesn't need to be a profoundly revolutionary action. Even Fidel just straight up played soccer sometimes. I think it's pretty harmless.
This applies to so many things, especially the things people do for fun in their free time.
Ya, but football is prole and cool :fidel-peace:
Anyhoo, thanks for your advice.
I went once, three years ago, and had a great time. It was my first introduction to concepts like decommodification. Seeing almost no corporate logos for a week is amazingly refreshing. And the naked people ratio of attractive people to hairy old people is surprisingly skewed towards the former.
That said, everything that everyone says here is probably true. Any person you meet could be genuine, or they could be some Silicon Valley tool. It claims to be based on "leave no trace," but more likely shoves aside the consequences just enough so no one has to think about them. The sculptures might be made by genuinely talented people experiencing their only chance to experience first-hand people enjoying the things they put their time and energy into, or they could just be clandestine corporate sponsorship.
So, I'd call it a smattering of good ideas, assembled into a disorganized whole such that none of them are placed into any realistic or holistic societal context.
But I really did have a great time.
its a beautiful example of why the west coast is creepy as fuck and culturally lost due to tech
If you can go, do it. It’s kind of cringe, and it’s full of grotesque techno ghouls in turnkey luxury RV camps, but it’s an amazing event like nothing else on earth.
Despite the pmc contingent, it’s still mostly artists and musician type people. I went with my wife, who worked on building giant (200 + foot) zoetropes that animated 3D sculptures.
Just wandering around the desert, high as shit, finding a tiny concert attended by like 10 people lit all by candles, and it’s just dark in every direction was so rad.
Also, it’s your friend, they want to do something with you that’s obviously important to them, and you’re turning them down because you’re afraid that it might be “cringe?” Come on.
also i've had fun are pre-burning man parties in San Francisco that were enjoyable, since it made up a lot of people who wanted to go but can't afford or make it. I mean if you're not into techno and other types of electronic music it's probably not your scene though, but i've never been able to afford or get a ticket back when I thought it was worth going to, and those were the next best thing. I don't really know how easy it is to find these events anymore cause I've completely dropped out of that type of scene, but they use to rent out big warehouses around the city and throw some good parties with some decently popular artists and that was pretty cool.
In it's early days, it was a gathering of horny artists and hippies burning a wooden man in a godforsaken desert in NV.
Video record circa 1994 FYI, this clip aired on nationally syndicated TV, which is how I found out about it, being a horny teenager and all. The show was called Weird TV.
Burning Man has since gone downhill. You aren't missing anything.
It started out with revolutionary potential, I was at the last event that had under 20k participants. Like others have said, it basically serves to sap revolutionary energy from direct action into hedonism. It was fun once, nowadays it will just make you ill. If you want something fun to do in September in the bay, go to Folsom Street.
It's everything we hate populated by the cringiest trust fund libs but it's also a fun time and you should experience it once
those videos would probably be less cringe if you were in them instead of watching them and tripping balls instead of sober
All I know is that people do drugs and dress like mad max extras.
