Washed up psycho Marian Goodell has a problem... the Burning Man festival is no longer "hot"

Allegedly, you don't need to buy a ticket if you skydive in. I wonder if that also covers paragliders

I mean the thing is huge and presumably securing rights to the playa, paying for all the people to staff the thing, lay out the roads, do communications and stuff is expensive. But should only be a couple bucks or so.

I understand it has been ruined by techbros from SF that roll in with exclusive VIP trailers, Elon musk types basically. Maybe even musk himself actually. And with those guys came an increased willingness to pay and presumably elevated prices, and more exclusivity. So the same fate that happens to anything quirky and artistic. Capitalist shitheads ruin it for everyone.

I've never been but I wish I had gone when I was younger. Apparently 20 years ago it was pretty cool.

why is it so expensive?

I was going to say paying off the local piggies and for use of the land, but I did some research and it seems no, at least pre covid that was only like 300k of a 45+ million USD budget. Until 2018 there are IRS forms online showing expenditures. Seems like they have a lot of staff judging by the payroll figures, probably way too many of them are year round employees. during 2020 they were reportedly already begging for donations saying they were running out of money from "running a global nonprofit without our primary source of revenue" (source https://redlib.northboot.xyz/r/BurningMan/comments/iv0uza/your_daily_reminder_that_burning_man_is/ )

They build a temporary city to accomodate 70,000 people in one of the harshest, most inhospitible places on earth.

Also thunderdome fighting is so much fun. Idk about burning man but wasteland weekend has the whole set up from Mad Max so it's goofballs bouncing around on bungie cords whacking each other with foam bats while the crowd roars. It's good silly mostly harmless fun. If you don't know "Thunderdome" is a setpiece from the movie of the same name. The protagonist has to battle the deuteragonist to the death inside a large geodesic dome. Weapons of all kinds are strapped to the dome and the fighters are hooked in to bungie harnesses so they can "fly" around the arena. Meanwhile the crowd is climbing all over the dome shouting abuse and encouragement. It's a fun scene and larpers and related goofballs like to use it as a premise for boffer (safe foam weapons) fighting.

Well luckily the only people who go to burning man are boomers and psychopathic millennials whose brain is 50% stocks, 20% NYT, 20% real estate, and 10% voting

literally 10 years ago the criticisms of how elitist and infiltrated it was

10 years? Shit, those criticisms have around since about 2005, if not earlier.

There was a social media site called Tribe.net that was filled with mostly Burners since Tribe was hq'd in San Francisco. I remember looking in the Burning Man tribe of the site and seeing complaints of how "sold out" the event had become because techbros, going to the desert to drop acid and look at topless hippie chicks, had taken over their art event, and thus the organizers begun charging cash money, ridiculous prices for what used to be a free-ish event.

Thank you for that link. It was very funny to read through ghoul bios

burning man
board of directors

Same. Can't imagine it got better during the last decade plus

Award-worthy bit

For the burners I know it's a profound experience of community, connection, love, and wonder. They're genuinely kind, sorta dumb hippies who really do pour their heart and soul in to the art they bring out to Black Rock. They get to see all their friends, take off all the masks society forces them to wear, be wild and free from the day to day drudgery of a society that hates them for being weird. They move heaven and earth, bum rides, beg borrow and steal to get out there.

It's incredibly sad. To them Burning Man is a kind of glimpse of paradise and most of them don't seem to recognize that they're the trained monkeys performing for the real audience of rich tech bros who inflict the very misery and poverty they're seeking to escape from. Or maybe they do know and don't care, seizing an opportunity for genuine community and belonging in spite of the crass larger picture of "the burn".

I think the appeal is there's usually a ton of free drugs there. And casual sex if you're hot enough.

That's what we're all hoping.

It always was, it was just waiting for crypto to be invented. There's a sheer cliff of class divide between the rich techbros who fly in to party and the poor working artists who bring all the cool shit. But it's always been a place for tech bros to go slumming with the freaks and geeks. Having spent time with burners i don't think it was ever "good". The " good" parts have always been people who find community despite the hyperindividualist neoliberal cultural void of burning man at a high level.

It's been trending farther and farther in to the depths of shitty tech bro orgy for decades. Idk if it ever was actually cool. I know a bunch of burners who are actual weird poor artists, and they have to all pool their couch money, bum rides, save, and "volunteer" to afford to go. Meanwhile wealthy people just buy all the shit they need and when they're done "leaving no trace" they dump tens of tons of trash in nearby cities and towns in Nevada. It's all an ugly, gaudy sham of hyperindividualism, exploitation, bougie gentrification of art as a concept, and dickbaggery. My weird burner buddies love it to death and all i can see is the hollow commodification of art by capitalism as incredibly rich people create this massive altar to hipocrisy where they bring in tons of weirdos so they can pretend to have culture while they do drugs and wander around naked then fuck off back to San Francisco to leave the artists who make it possible to starve and suffer for another year.