Is Burning Man Over?

The amount of emissions from a large bonfire is literally 0 in comparison to what it takes to bring half of the participants aboard jets from halfway around the world. Since that would make all festivals "over", by your logic, I can guarantee you that will never happen.

The whole thing has been out of touch as long as I've known about it (10y). I won the lottery one year but sold my tickets out of conscience.

Rich folk pouring in from all over with thousands of dollars in disposable stuff bought from Amazon/Walmart to "survive" in an inhospitable environment, just to participate in a hedonist festival that masquerades as a something morally superior.

"But it's leave no trace!" Lol so you just need to schlep your waste products out and dump it at the nearest non-playa location.

The negative externalities of burning man are blinding.

Incredibly wasteful week+.

> a massive amount of oil was lit on fire

How much is a "massive amount"? Lots of people at Burning Man would have flown in; a 4000 mile flight burns 50 gallons of fuel (around 340lb) per passenger which I imagine is considerably more than whatever you saw got burned.

It is “Burning Man”, if you have a problem with them burning, probably should skip it.

Burning Man is like working at Google: I really really wish I could have been involved in 2007-8ish, but today there is no amount of money you could pay me to do it in 2022.

What if the reason they look more and more out of touch is because they're more and more out of touch? Wouldn't that lead them create ever larger displays of waste and damn anyone else's opinion?

Why people who haven’t been to the few recent burns (or any ever) feel obliged to comment on this thread.

And why they think their comments have anything to do with the actual reality? Isn’t _this_ what is called out of touch?

The origin of the thread is also quite ridiculous as pointed below in the comments, since when burning some oil became a problem? And since then condemning that is anything more than virtue signaling?

Now, to the actual topic, as somebody who’ve been to the recent burns (and no, I didn’t fly in on a jet and was not a part of the plug and play camp).

Last year burn was freaking awesome! A lot of people don’t realize, but BM Org actually stopped doing their events for 2 years. But you still can camp there legally. Just with no fires on the ground. So the community took the matter in their hands and organized a Renegade Burn. First year it was about 1.5k in size, second about 12k. And this is insane what can be done with no central coordination.

Instead of the burning man we had a great drone show of a man that brought some people to tears (keeping the spirit alive). There were no massive sound camps as before, but instead a lot of grassroots smaller camps with ridiculous music that made me laugh so much. Instead of the streets there were now islands of life in the desert with no fences. And instead of the porta-potties you now had to figure out your situation yourself.

It went mostly smoothly, my expectation was that in the end there will be a ton of crap and poo left, but no, we stayed till Tue and I haven’t seen anything like that (although I heard of some instances).

I am very curious what would happen next year if it keeps going like that, can this self-org sustain the larger scale or would it have to become the new BMOrg. But don’t think we’ll be able to see it as BMOrg takes back the reigns and runs the next one again, afaik. So unless no major covid wave again, we’re back to what we had 3 years ago (which is also a one-in-a-lifetime insane experience, just of a different sort)

Another anecdote that I find fun. Five years ago I’ve met a guy who was on 32 burns, I think from the first or second. I asked him the same question, how much it changed.

Long story short, it does change all the time. It’s in its nature and the nature of things. You either accept that or stick to your ideal picture of something and suffer. Anicca, “you can’t maintain reality to your satisfaction”, but it is still beatifull and powefull and full of love and I’m gratefull to all people who help and ever helped to bring it to life.

'I think the bigger turn-off is all the 'VIP' enclaves and their 'hospitality staff', often aka young women under pressure to offer extra-contractual services. Perhaps the burn should be more distributed.

Lighting large fires when the lefty social pressure says that it is “bad” is in keeping with the burning man ethos. The lefty “man” keeps trying to control and bully everyone into meaningless virtue signaling and herd mentality. Defying that might actually return burning man back to its roots and make it interesting again. If the left wants to be the man, then they get burnt just like the right.

Burning man should be an equal opportunity middle finger to all who try to control.

Side note: willing to bet the total per person carbon released by burning man is quite low compared to other vacations most “eco conscious” attendees attend.

Burning man being NIMBY about geothermal energy (https://www.rgj.com/story/life/arts/burning-man/2022/01/10/b...) probably has more negative impacts towards the climate than their fires.

It's been over since 1997 when Black Rock City LLC was incorporated.

I don’t think it was ever about being in-touch or even low emissions. I thought the purpose was to be funky like SouthBy

Traditions outweighs environmental concerns all the time.

Of all the environmental concerns, I bet the carbon footprint of the eponymous burning man ranks low compared to stuff like people flying in from other countries.

Maybe they should make Burning Man only for Nevadans?

People for in from all over the world. That is literally burning oil.

Spend the same amount of time worrying about emissions from the military industrial complex and we'll be aright.

Maybe checkout "WokeFest". Held virtually over zoom. Absolute rager.

What’s the next Burning Man?

Can someone explain 'limping along'?