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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

#31

Post by megagpt2 »

brianshaler wrote: post #27
foolfoolz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I think the point GP was making was that the co-founder was basing their judgment secondhand from stories from friends and headlines. Another bit I found peculiar was the mentions of anarchism while seeming to have a rigid idea of what the event should or should not be. It's certainly far less anarchistic today—placements, permits, law enforcement—but it's not exactly anarchism to say it isn't allowed to evolve to fi…

Every anarchistic community ends up with rules to ensure things run smoothly. I think anarchism should be viewed as the movement towards less rules, not a movement that allows absolutely no rules. Allocating office desks so that everyone knows where their desk is is just common sense - if you're concerned about people envying the best desks, randomise it every week. You have to mark out roads if you want there to be roads.

Law enforcement was probably there because law enforcement said they'd ban the whole event if law enforcement wasn't there. That's how they typically work.

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

#34

Post by aprilthird2021 »

HaloZero wrote: post #19

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 Californ…

That's a huge amount even in San Francisco. Sometimes I'm shocked what working in big tech does to people's ideas about what a normal annual salary is.

Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

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

#36

Post by johnohara »

I don't understand how nostalgia can be applied to Burning Man.

Outside of those few who dedicate themselves to the organization and administration of the event, each burning man is a unique assemblage of thousands of people, different in every way from one year to the next. Except perhaps the location.

Without the different human beings who show up each year, the event would be nothing more than a dust bowl waiting to become a mud pit.

The "soul," if there is one, is the sum total of the expressions those humans bring with them at any given point in time.

Change the humans and you change the expression. So exactly which "soul" does the author long for?

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

#37

Post by jesse_dot_id »

I've known this for awhile, since at least 2020. Specifically when they told a documentarian he could film and then threatened litigation he release his film after he had already shot it. He had to blur literally everything at Burning Man but the guy he's following around.

https://www.blurringman.org/blurring-man

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

#38

Post by chollida1 »

About 15 years ago it really started to get corporate. Big money came in and created camps with air conditioning, huge RV's no bartering, etc.

Dustin Moskovitz and the like started going and wouldn't dare behave the ordinary peasants, by sleeping in tents, participating in the community, bartering for things.

Heck Zuckerberg took a helicopter there one year.

instead they just threw money at the event so they wouldn't have to do the things that made burning man, burning man.

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

#40

Post by Barrin92 »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #34
HaloZero wrote: post #19

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 Californ…

That's a huge amount even in San Francisco. Sometimes I'm shocked what working in big tech does to people's ideas about what a normal annual salary is. Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

I think you can argue, as the author does, whether the nature of the event has changed but Burning man attracts about 80k people at this point. That's comparable to Wacken, the largest annual metal festival in the world. I know people involved in that one and it's definitely a year long job to organize.

300k is a lot of money but for someone overseeing an event that size, doesn't seem that extraordinary. In particular given the responsibility for the safety of people.

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