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I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

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Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#11

Post by foolfoolz »

whack wrote: post #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

it’s still the city. the org might be run in a lame way but any time you get too involved in something you see another layer of politics and favoritism and helping friends out that just seems wrong. most people going aren’t at that level and it’s fine. you’ll still have a good time (if you want to)

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#13

Post by cassonmars »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #7
gkoberger wrote: post #5

Burning 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.

They can be, but unfortunately the org has threatened to revoke official regional burn status unless they followed all the same rules, in particular, that children be allowed. There used to be some leeway on that, and there were really wonderful regional burns that did not permit kids. They were forced to, which resulted in the "real" burn being in a small taped off area.

Seems insane to me to think kids should be at burns.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#14

Post by Taniwha »

aappleby wrote: post #3

and he's been complaining ever since they stopped letting him shoot machine guns at teddy bears.

Blackrock used to be pretty wild-west (I was going before Burning Man started), pretty scary stuff at times (a friend once did something silly and hurt himself badly, Clinton was doing something in Reno, the SS heard about it, thought it was nearby and MiB showed up looking hot and bothered in their suits), over time the BLM realised that they needed to police the area a bit more and things got toned down (doesn't help that BM situates itself across multiple law enforcement jurisdictions, these days there's a surfeit of police)

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#17

Post by blackqueeriroh »

nsedlet wrote: post #6

As 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.

And yet, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the founder of something to share his opinions on why he thinks it’s no longer the thing he created.

Both things can be true.

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#19

Post by HaloZero »

An aside though about the whole "lost its soul". I was looking up Marion Goodell's salary and it's pretty high. The Burning Man ORG spends a lot on salaries, especially since it relies on a mostly volunteer workforce.

She and the C-suite for the Burning Man Org make like $300,000 plus. It's not a HUGE amount in San Francisco if you consider tech salaries but I parsed salaries of CEOs of arts organizations in California and she's still easily by far the most highly paid CEO in her field.

They also have a CTO what makes 300k.

https://burningman.org/about-us/what-we-do/financials-public...

Re: I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

#20

Post by newsclues »

cassonmars wrote: post #13
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regional burns are a thing, and they're pretty awesome.

They can be, but unfortunately the org has threatened to revoke official regional burn status unless they followed all the same rules, in particular, that children be allowed. There used to be some leeway on that, and there were really wonderful regional burns that did not permit kids. They were forced to, which resulted in the "real" burn being in a small taped off area. Seems insane to me to think kids should be at…

That’s because it’s easier to recruit kids into cults or whatever
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