I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
sfstandard.com
I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
1–10 of 122 posts
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#2I think this has been obvious for many years now.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#3and he's been complaining ever since they stopped letting him shoot machine guns at teddy bears.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#4> ...the festival I helped invent 36 years ago. Curiously, I get this interest even though I haven’t set foot in the Black Rock Desert since 1996.
Not doubting the headline conclusion, but I would have expected a better source than someone who hasn't been to Burning Man in literally 30 years. AFAICT, Burning Man was still very well regarded ~20 years ago, long after this founder stopped attending
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#5Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been.
But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#6As the author says himself, he hasn’t attended in 30 years. I understand some of the things he’s complaining about, but I don’t think that is the dominant experience of being there.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#7Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been. But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
Regional burns are a thing, and they're pretty awesome.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#8Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been. But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
I looked a bit into the author. His friend unfortunately died at Burning Man in 1996, as did two other people. Since then, he left and has been an advocate for shutting down Burning Man. They fought over the name for 10 years after that.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#9Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been. But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
Burning Man is also a quintessential example of "what if we just did a cool thing?" - a philosophy that more of us need to try following.
Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
#10Everything small becomes big, and then gets enshittificated