
A Brief History of Who Ruined Burning Man - jseliger
http://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/tenprinciples/a-brief-history-of-who-ruined-burning-man/
======
mseebach
Two semi-random thoughts that struck me when reading this:

First, this Douglas Adams quote:

 _I 've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to
technologies:

\- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and
is just a natural part of the way the world works.

\- Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new
and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

\- Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of
things._

The second was this very insightful article on the dynamics of the evolution
of sub-cultures: [https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-
sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths)

For the record, I've never been to Burning Man, nor seriously tempted to
change that.

~~~
theptip
Another article I enjoyed on sub-cultures and tribalism:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-
the...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-the-
movement/)

Beautiful Adams quote ;)

~~~
jacquesm
Different Adams I believe.

~~~
maxerickson
Perhaps the paragraphs have been used to express distinct thoughts.

That'd be an okay pen name though.

~~~
theptip
Ha, yes -- the second paragraph was referring to the gp, not the linked
article.

------
akiselev
I've been to Burning Man several times and this article is spot on. No matter
which year I go, there is always some new group "ruining" the event according
to the "true" burners (and since BM is all about inclusivity, this group seems
to grow exponentially). The first few years I came, the moaning was about
"sparkle poanies", people in their 20s who came to party for a week with
drugs, costumes, and glitter... without bringing a weeks worth of food or
water and no tent or shade structure. This evolution is inevitable and it
doesn't change the fact that there is no event like Burning Man on the planet.
Standing in the middle of a dessert as a city as vibrant and alive as the
Vegas strip pops up around you is an experience I'd recommend for anyone.

In my opinion, the only group that is on the path to actually "ruining" BM is
the organization itself. From the rapid price hikes to the parking passes to
general incompetence running infrastructure for such a large popup event to
clashing egos, every time I talk to a current or former employee I get the
sense that BM is run by children, half of whom want to run it like it's the
90s when the event was a _tenth_ of the size it is today. The worst part has
been the antagonism between the BM org and the BLM/local law enforcement.
Every move the org makes seems to make life harder for attendees (although the
cops seem to have stopped arresting for drugs, giving out heavy fines to
recoup lawsuit costs instead, so I guess that's a plus).

~~~
hashkb
> no event like burning man on the planet

Check out regional burns. They're smaller, but many are not ruined yet.

~~~
happypants23
Ha. I've gone to AfrikaBurn a few times (largest burn after Burning Man). It
started circa 2007 and the old-timers are already complaining that its ruined.
Also juicy politics like this: [https://medium.com/@kurtsiegfried/fear-and-
loathing-at-afrik...](https://medium.com/@kurtsiegfried/fear-and-loathing-at-
afrikaburn-987f373e43eb)

~~~
kbenson
That is perhaps the most densely phrase-ridden rant I've ever encountered.
it's worth reading just to marvel at how much can be implied while saying so
little definitively. The author effortlessly weaves idioms and references to
create a narrative of abuse, which makes it easy to relate to the
circumstances _alluded_ to.

It's masterful work, because even though I know nothing about any specific
details, and this leaves ,me wanting to know those details before I take it as
gospel, the truth is that a few months from now if AfrikaBurn came up in
conversation, what I would likely remember is that I had read that it has real
organizational and sociological problems. So, I guess that's goal achieved for
this author, no matter how much at this point I want verification before
accepting this.

~~~
jzwinck
You're right. I proved it to myself by reading the whole thing replacing
AfrikaBurn with IBM. It really works; e.g.:

> By sleight-of-hand and the wholesale and completely unnecessary import of an
> unwieldy American pop culture franchise, a group of creatively blocked
> shadow artists, bureaucrats and box tickers are making an elaborate and
> specious lunge at celebrity through curation-by-funding. Employing savvy
> redistribution of money, they stand on the shoulders of established, older
> artists and their fashionable, younger counterparts, thus hoping to crown
> themselves the fairy godmothers of local pop culture. In short, involvement
> in IBM appears to be nothing more than a cynical exercise in associative
> branding for themselves and, in some cases, the products they promote in the
> real world.

With apologies to IBM. You can use Monsanto or Tata Motors if you prefer.

------
wpietri
I would like this article a lot better if they included some of the legitimate
criticism about what Burning Man has become.

The number one "ruined" point I hear about from early attendees is when it
went from a volunteer effort to something with a year-round staff. Seeing a
small band in a pub is different than a giant, commercialized stadium show.
Neither is wrong, but nobody is served by pretending that they're the same. As
most developers know, things change when you go from "I do this for the love"
to "this is my job".

I don't think Burning Man was "ruined" by that transition, but I don't like
how this article mocks the whole notion that something might have been lost
along the way. Of course, it was written by somebody whose job is Burning Man,
and as Upton Sinclair says, "It is difficult to get a man to understand
something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

~~~
mgce
I believe the author is an unpaid volunteer.

More broadly, I'm not sure I fully understand the criticsm. There is paid
staff, yes. But that's still a vanishingly tiny percentage of the effort that
makes Burning Man what it is. It is still first and foremost a volunteer
effort, and lives or dies by that effort. It's exceptionally few people, to my
understanding, who earn money. I believe you can find a list of all of them on
the BM financials page.

~~~
wpietri
I count 84 people listed as permanent staff on the website, which is not
something I'd call "exceptionally few". And I'm not criticizing the fact that
people are permanently employed; more power to 'em. But as Pica_soO says,
things change once it's your paycheck.

Consider the difference between "music" and "music industry" for example. Or
the difference between coding on one's personal open source project and coding
on somebody else's dime. Consider how many startups compromise their vision to
become commercially successful. Or go talk to somebody at an ad-supported
site; you can hear them defend things (e.g., auto-play video ads) that they
would have previously reviled.

If people don't like how a hobby project is going, they have no problem
shutting it down. But once it's one's living, that becomes almost unthinkable.
Which in turn means that other things become almost unthinkable.

So my criticism of this article is that it's basically an exercise in refusing
to think about the legitimate issues people have with what Burning Man has
become.

~~~
mgce
Yeah, I get your point. It's an interesting one worth real consideration. And
that's an ongoing conversation between the community and the permanent staff
that the community understandably remains hyper-vigilant about constantly.

But my specific point was that I don't believe the author of the blog post is
paid by Burning Man. So I don't believe the content of the blog post would be
inspired by that angle (correct me if you find out otherwise). That inclines
me to consider its viewpoint more seriously, precisely for the reasons you
mention.

~~~
wpietri
I read his bio again, and those sound like paid roles to me. If you'd like to
claim some authority here beyond "random internet commenter" to assert he's
never been paid by them, please do.

------
FreakyT
I love this breakdown; it really demonstrates how the "ruining" of Burning Man
is no different than the sort of aversion to change that occurs with basically
anything that people are enthusiastic about.

* Bands? "They used be all about the music, then they went _mainstream_ "

* Video games? "Now they just cater to beginners; they don't care about _real_ gamers anymore"

* Movies? "They're so focused on the special effects, they don't even bother with the _story_ "

...and the list goes on. Name just about anything that people enjoy, and
you'll find a vocal contingent complaining about how recent changes have
"ruined" it.

~~~
heartsucker
Those seem to be legitimate complaints that seem to be "take something
specialized that caters to a small crowd, then water it down so it appeals to
everyone."

That said, sometimes such complaints are clearly a bit whiny, but then again,
sometimes they are warranted critiques.

~~~
shuntress
I don't have any data to back this up but I would argue that as the total
number of video games has increased, the number of good games (as good and
better than the games when you were 20 years younger) has also increased.

We didn't take N good games that 10% of people like and turn them in to N bad
games that 90% of people like.

Instead, we have something more like 10xN good games that 10% of people like
and 100xN bad games that 90% of people like.

With movies, as opposed to games, I think this is less pronounced given the
age of medium but still present.

~~~
douche
I would agree about video games. I haven't seen the supply of games slowing
down any, and there's a lot of high-quality stuff mixed in there - way more
than any one person could ever hope to consume. Of course there's a lot of
shovelware too, but Sturgeon's Law.

Movies seem to really be hollowing out the middle more. You've got a lot of
very low-budget fliers and indie prestige stuff and a lot of $100M+ mega-
movies, drifting now into attempts at Marvel-esque cinematic universe
perpetual money-printing machines for increasingly dubious IPs.

~~~
icebraining
_Movies seem to really be hollowing out the middle more. You 've got a lot of
very low-budget fliers and indie prestige stuff and a lot of $100M+ mega-
movies, drifting now into attempts at Marvel-esque cinematic universe
perpetual money-printing machines for increasingly dubious IPs._

I'm not sure I agree. Those two types have certainly risen, but if you look at
films from last year, there a are still a ton of "middle" films with decent
budgets (10-30M) and high praise from the critics - Selma, Spotlight, Carol,
The Big Short, etc. I don't see a hollow middle.

~~~
douche
All of those are Oscar-bait prestige pictures. They aren't really aimed at the
middle.

~~~
nl
So, except for good expensive movies, good indie budget movies and good middle
budget movies all movies are crap?

That's sounding a little bit like Sturgeon's law.

------
gwbas1c
I went to Burning Man twice. What I found the last time was that it was so
biiiiig that it was hard for me to have fun. Large traffic jams getting into
and out of an event just aren't my cup of tea. I also stayed for a very long
time in a tent; if I were to go back for longer than a 2-3 days, I'd need to
stay in an RV.

What I did realize, though, is that in order to really get the most out of
Burning Man, I'd need to really get into the culture. People get into Burning
Man like they get into their churches, where there are lots of social events.
Ultimately, the groups that enjoy Burning Man the most are large groups of
extended friends that like can be found in a small church.

The hardest thing with Burning Man, IMO, is the participatory prep. Meaning,
the easy part of the prep is like planning for a long camping trip. What
ultimately is required for me to be more than a tourist is much more than what
I was able to do as an introverted person who just doesn't like to make
artwork or run games for other people.

------
vhost-
I grew up in Nevada along a main highway that people take to burning man. I
really wish "leave no trace" included places outside blackrock.

People would also routinely leave their playa covered and broken down vans,
RVs and cars in my neighborhood. In the desert by my parent's house we would
find numerous trailers abandoned full of trash, empty water bottles and old
clothes. You knew it was from burning man because the stuff was covered in
playa dust.

~~~
marssaxman
When was this? I lived in Reno for a while, and I remember having a similarly
disgusted response to the trash strewn along the road when I happened to pass
by shortly after the burn in 1998. My understanding is that the org has tried
hard to deal with that problem since - there is certainly a lot of messaging
before the event about where you can and cannot dump water or trash, and how
not to be a dick to the locals, generally.

I didn't start going to Burning Man until after I moved to Seattle, so I
haven't actually seen what the fernley-wadsworth road looks like post-event
these days, but my impression of Hwy 447 going northwest is that it generally
stays clean.

~~~
vhost-
Last time I saw it was probably 2005-ish. It was along 445 near Spanish
Springs.

------
projektfu
As soon as I heard about burning man, back in 1996, it had definitely jumped
the shark. If this guy knows about it, it's no longer hip.

~~~
hammock
2016: OP's blog post ruined Burning Man.

~~~
pacofvf
I think we can agree that the guy at 2016 IAC ruined BM this year.

------
IsaacL
I've never been to Burning Man but for a few years I was heavily into
meditation, dabbled in psychadelics, and was reading Timothy Leary, Robert
Anton Wilson, and any other mind-expanding literature I could get my hands on.

I get the sense Burning Man used to attract people like my younger self. From
my Facebook and Instagram feeds, I now see many startup scenesters I know
attending. If I want know, I feel I'd have to be much more careful to suppress
my "weird" side. I can understand why the original attendees feel the event
has become too diluted to be appealing.

Not having been, I don't know, but from a distance it looks like a pattern
I've seen play out in other communities. One thing I've noticed is that many
people who are genuinely cool, interesting, curious, adventurous and so on,
don't see themselves that way at all - and many people who see themselves as
cool and creative are in reality vapid and shallow.

~~~
kpennell
This is a great little comment/insight

------
donmb
Swap [Burning Man] with any modern or long lasting festival. Here in Germany
it would be "Rock am Ring" or "Southside". Very well written. We all will
sooner or later act like our grandparents and say "in the past everything was
better". If we are honest, it wasn't.

~~~
delegate
> Swap [Burning Man] with any modern or long lasting festival

You can't really do that. Burning man is different from a normal music
festival.

I've never been to Burning Man, but I've been to other similar week-long
psychedelic festivals, like Boom in Portugal and it's definitely not your
'normal' rock music festival.

First there's the 'non-commercial' side - no companies or logos or other
publicity displayed anywhere, then there's the international aspect -
literally, it's a gathering of people from all over the world. Then there are
the drugs, the virtual lack of alcohol, the psychedelia and the 'unsanity'
that people experience for a week, which manifests as all kinds of forms of
art, music, yoga, martial arts, shamanic rituals and so on.

'Leave no trace' means people are conscious and careful about the place, so
the festival ground is always clean.

People change, they become non-competitive, extremely nice and generous to
each other - sort of like a sect, but in a good way :)).

So the festival is not just a great amount of fun and suffering from weather
extremes, but also a very 'spiritual' and introspective experience - in which
I personally regain hope in humanity..

Boom Festival is always a powerful experience, but 'burners' who've been at
both claim Burning Man is even more powerful.

Of course as these events gain popularity, more and more people are going to
be attracted to them and inevitably that's going to change the 'old spirit' of
the festival.

But this is the rule of life - old gives way to new and it's been like this
since the beginning of time, right ? :).

~~~
c22
I have been to burning man and there is nothing remotely approaching a lack of
alcohol, virtual or otherwise.

------
heartsucker
I feel like this takes the term "ruining" too literally. Yes, clearly nothing
was completely ruined with each subsequent change, but the current incantation
is certainly not the same as the first, and people are right to criticize the
change (just as people are right to defend it). No one change might have been
the death, but all together, it is very understandable that some people might
call it "dead" and have moved on.

~~~
ben174
I think that's the joke.

~~~
heartsucker
The post seemed to claim that because each small change didn't ruin it, it's
not ruined. I'm saying that it's ruined to some because it's no longer the
thing they fell in love with.

~~~
HCIdivision17
Huh, you know, I've never really noticed it as Xeno's Paradox applied that way
before. I'll have to keep an eye out for it, since it can lead to such a
different conclusion with the same information.

~~~
lfowles
Zeno's paradox or Ship of Theseus?

------
protomyth
I am impressed, this was a really good article that I thought was just another
rant going in.

The universal rule of groups: its always the next guy who ruins the coolness
of a group

As to Burning Man itself, it always felt like one of those events that I was
not cool enough to go to. Camping in the desert would be interesting, and
probably a lot less stressful than some of the camping I did during high
school.

~~~
jcbrand
> As to Burning Man itself, it always felt like one of those events that I was
> not cool enough to go to.

So you're playing your own gatekeeper? If you wanted to go, just go, you might
just learn a thing or two about coolness, yourself and other people.

Coolness is largely an illusion.

In any case, isn't being uncool the coolest thing nowadays? At least that's
the impression I get when I look at hipsters. 20 years ago, no-one would be
caught dead looking like they do, it would have been totally uncool. Now it's
cool (perhaps not for long anymore).

In my opinion, there's no substitute for authenticity, and anything that's
considered cool or fashionable is merely an imitation of real authenticity
(see e.g. late-stage hipsterism).

~~~
johan_larson
Well, here's the thing. Some of us have deeply mainstream tastes. We mostly
like the food that's served in chain restaurants, the music that plays on the
radio, and the movies that play at the multiplex. If we venture outside that
to more exotic material, the experience is usually more alienating than
delightful.

Burning Man is made for the exact opposite type of people. It's for people who
find all things mainstream stifling, and are driven to break out of it in some
way. It's for people who are into producing or consuming something, anything,
that's several sigma off mean. That's what it celebrates. And for those of us
who are really not into that stuff, going there is at best a waste of time.

~~~
mgce
You sound like you're not a good fit for Burning Man.

I hope you don't take this as a negative comment. That's not why I'm writing
this. It's definitely not for everyone; it helps no one trying to make it an
event for everyone, and anyone who considers it needs to do real soul
searching about their own identity and how that might intersect with the
event. You're showing clear self-awareness which is leading you to a
particular intuition. I respect that you can see with confidence who you are
and where your cultural fit is.

------
acomjean
I know a someone that goes to burning man a lot (they call themselves
"burners"). I asked how it was this year and was told one of the best years
ever. Last year wasn't so go according to this person. Its probably who you
are and what you're looking for. For her, its all about the art installations.

The logistics and planning of getting everything out to the dessert from the
east coast was more significant than I had imagined.

I borrowed her popup tent that was covered in burning man dust, its weird gray
and alkali. Its remarkable that burning man actually happens.

~~~
alexandersingh
Incidentally, last year had the worst weather in many, many years. Frequent
sandstorms and freezing temperatures at night.

------
Chathamization
I first became aware of Burning Man in the late 90's. It sounded interesting,
but a lot of people said it wasn't worth going to anymore because all the new
people had ruined it and it was nothing like it used to be. The argument
doesn't seem to have changed much since then - "it's gone downhill over the
last few years and is nothing like it was 8-9 years ago when I first went."

It wouldn't surprise me if in 2026 people are talking about how terrible
Burning Man has become and how it's nothing like the wonderful Burning Man of
2016.

~~~
marssaxman
I also first heard about Burning Man in the mid '90s, but didn't actually
attend until 2001. I was worried that I was going to be seeing the decrepit,
watered-down remnants of something that had once been wild and wonderful.
Well... I'm here to tell you that it has certainly changed over the last
fifteen years, but it is still wild and it is still wonderful.

I think that this pattern exists in part because you can't really have the
same mind-blowing experience twice. You can keep going back to the playa, and
the event will keep offering you new experiences and even some surprises, but
you do get accustomed to it. I suspect that many people claiming it is not as
good as it used to be are failing to distinguish their reaction to the novelty
of the experience from the nature of the event itself.

It is very common for people to go every year for 3-5 years, then move on -
not because Burning Man has gone downhill somehow, but because they have
gotten all they need out of it and are now ready to spend their summers doing
something else.

------
whybroke
The confusion stems from the idea that Burning Man is still a cultural
phenomenon rather than just entertainment/art installation. An erroneous
belief that the promoters seem to have internalized to their own confusion.
Indeed, part of the entertainment value is the perception that just showing up
in costume means you are engaged in significant culture production. So easy!

Disappointment stems from attendees expecting a cultural phenomenon and
getting a show; the expectation that Burning Man is still important but
finding it's just a show. You don't get this problem at Disneyland because and
talk of 'Disney spirit' is tongue in cheek.

Here are some more substantial questions than the sort of feel good straw-man
in the article. What new ideas have come out of it in the last 15 years? How
do you create culture by showing up for a weekend to a catered camp ground and
show? Is there any overlap at all to what attendees think about the
meaning/point of Burning Man? So if you come west just add it to the Vegas-
Disneyland circuit because that is all it is now.

Indeed there is one advantage to Vegas and Disney, the cops don't shamelessly
hassle gay people.

~~~
mgce
Burning Man is fundamentally different than Disneyland and is still pumping
out extremely strong culture. 99% of the disappointment people have at Burning
Man is precisely because of that - expecting a "show", or something that's
going to be on display to entertain them, then feeling bored / disillusioned /
shunned when the reality that they have to do real work to connect into it
sets (or doesn't set) in.

Your interpretation sounds excessively jaded to me and irreconcilable with the
communities I know that continue to nurture and grow from BM.

I notice in particular your comment about coming to catered camps. That's
precisely what Burning Man's community is pushing back hardest against,
because the community wants to avoid the exact degeneration into vapid
entertainment that you're claiming it's become. It's deeply deceptive to
suggest this is a lost battle, or that the heart that makes this community
something more isn't still strong and fighting _very_ hard for the good fight.

Edit: I didn't notice your comment about gay people. What are you trying to
express there? Black Rock City has to be one of the most gay-friendly places
on earth. Where are you getting these ideas?

~~~
whybroke
I hope you are right about some culture production still going on, I can not
speak to the whole event or even a statistically significant amount. Perhaps
limiting ticket sales to a tiny time window has helped.

Yes, the bulk of the community is gay friendly. The cops (which were not there
in the early days) sure as hell are not. Aside form being told of other
harassment by them, I personally witnessed an event in 2006 when two friends
of mine were detained for the weekend in Reno on some ludicrous indecency
charge and released on Monday without charge.

So good luck to the event and its narrative but I and every one I know are
sure as hell out of it.

~~~
mgce
A number of my close friends are part of the gay community there, so I
strongly care about that issue. My experience has been that the gay community
is very strong and has as good relations with police as anyone. Of all the
complaints I've heard about police, I really haven't heard that as a theme.
I'm sorry your friends had that bad experience.

The (overbearing) presence of police is dispiriting, and is most definitely a
sunk cost of the growth and notoriety of the event as it now is. No one enjoys
that. It is what it is. That said, it's easy to overstate its impact - they're
ultimately a very small part of the experience and don't really stop you from
doing whatever you want to do out there.

Burning Man is not what it was in 2000. People who really enjoyed what it was
then may not enjoy what it is now. But it really isn't Disneyland or Vegas.
Thankfully (in my experience), there's still a long, long way to go before it
gets there. When it's getting there I'll be the first to step off the ride.
But I'm still enthusiastically in love with what it is now and proud of the
communities I know and have been a part of. They're some of the most solid
people I've ever known. That's mostly, in the end, what keeps me there.

Our conversation sounds like a "changing of the guards" dialogue. I'm glad you
have good memories from your times and I hope you can find some joy knowing
there are still people with fires in their heart stirring the flames.

~~~
whybroke
I am infinitely glad there are people with your sprint putting effort into
making things work at burning man or anywhere else. I sincerely wish you the
best.

------
rburhum
Huh... and here I was thinking that Burning Man was ruined when they decided
to run their infrastructure on Oracle and Salesforce

------
bdrool
The very first thing I ever heard about Burning Man was how it wasn't cool any
more. This was in the 1990s.

I've come to believe that the real purpose of Burning Man is to have these
kinds of meta-discussions. The actual gathering in the desert is nothing but a
side effect.

------
droopyEyelids
But each time, what it "was" did get "ruined" ... at least enough to change it
into something different.

It's like the old koan about a radio: if you replace the speakers, then the
housing, then the circuitry, then the controls, is it the same radio?

~~~
thoth
Koan about the radio?! Try nearly 2000 years old, also known as the Ship of
Theseus
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)).

~~~
shuntress
If you replace the object in the analogy is the thought experiment still the
same?

~~~
Fargren
Yeah, it pretty much is.

------
sixQuarks
I've been to burning man 8 times, first was 2001, most recent was this year
(hadn't been in 7 years).

the shark has definitely jumped higher since the last time I went. Hardly saw
any naked people this year. There were lots more "coachella" types - doing a
lot of instagramming, but the worst for me was that there really wasn't a lot
of room to be by yourself out on the playa. There were always people around.
In past years, I could be out there by myself if I went out far enough.

That being said, BM is still incredible and I'm not against it evolving. The
spirit is still alive and well.

~~~
mgce
I do wish there was some way to ban cell phones out there. You may have
noticed there's even reception now - this started in 2015 and, to my
knowledge, isn't BM's fault - one of the cell companies decided to put up a
tower nearby.

That change saddens me.

That said, in the end I basically adopt your last sentence as my ethos. Change
is inevitable and the saddest thing of all is to miss what's still great
because you're too focused on what's lost.

------
jseliger
There is an intriguing consilience between this post and sama's "We're in a
Bubble" ([http://blog.samaltman.com/were-in-a-
bubble](http://blog.samaltman.com/were-in-a-bubble)).

------
JoeAltmaier
The most powerful line is the last one:

    
    
       "The 10 Principles are at their most powerful when given to strangers."
    

So quit resenting new folks joining; that's kind of the point of the whole
thing.

~~~
pweissbrod
All the true scotsmen joined burning man 10 years ago!

------
davesque
I guess this must be true of any strong subculture. Subcultures are, by
definition, "sub" or differentiated from some other mainstream culture. So the
subculture's very existence is based on this boundary between itself and the
mainstream culture. Participants in the subculture are obviously concerned
with who is closer to or further away from this boundary.

------
Semiapies
No mention of _This Is Burning Man_ and other media coverage in the early 90s?
I'm vaguely surprised.

------
engx
There's some interesting parallels between Burning Man and the Cremation of
Care. The latter started at the Bohemian Grove in 1881-

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation_of_Care](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation_of_Care)

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op00to
The way this relates to FOSS communities and the culture that surrounds them
is really interesting.

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brianolson
pfft. It was better next year.

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njharman
Time aka change ruins everything.

Every wave of people, SF residents, phone phreakers, immigrants, every
generatuin; bemoans the next wave of people are ruining it.

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bertiewhykovich
Burning Man is an enabler of some of Silicon Valley's deepest pathologies and
I'd prefer to never hear about it ever again.

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jokoon
I have not yet planned to go to burning man, lack of fund or motivation, and I
don't plan to. Am I too ruining Burning Man ?

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beatpanda
God, I know, it was so much better next year

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pasbesoin
The same people who ruined the Internet and every other unconventional new
thing.

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computerwizard
Burning man was pretty awesome this year. Can't wait for next year :D

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frik
Next years headline, "HN post ruined Burning Man" ;)

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scelerat
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"

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swayvil
He could have simply summed his "who ruined it" assertions.

He could have said "Allowing an uncontrolled influx of new participants ruined
burning man".

And that is precisely right.

Some clubs should be exclusive.

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amdlla
So what is the newer untainted version?

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ryan42
I've never been to BM, but I think there are many art/music festivals which
you could go to that are more accessible and very similar themes and things
happening burning man has, but on a smaller scale. I just attended my first
"art/music" focused festival a few weeks ago. It had meditation/yoga/various
educational workshops, artists displaying all different kinds of wares for
sale, people trading and giving small things freely (think shared water,
wristbands, food, trinket). There was a rock that had a sign, purposed to
"give something, take something". The downsides were there too. Lots of people
just there for the music/drugs/party aspect or whatever. There are probably
100's of alternatives to burning man - regional burns and music/art festivals,
that are much more accessible to get to and experience. Most are 2-3 days
long, and that is more like prepping for a regular camping trip than something
the scale of burning man.

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lintiness
those sound like the same people who ruined my indy band.

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refurb
This t-shirt always made me laugh...

[http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/wp-
content/uploa...](http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/wp-
content/uploads/2008/02/435VennTshirt.png)

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thomasmarriott
'Next year you'll say last year was so much better.'

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SeanDav
I predict overseas tourists will ruin Burning Man soon™

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d--b
This guy just ruined burning man...

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vegabook
Ooh the delicious irony... The very demographic (overpaid valley types) who
ruined burning man now upvotes a story about Who Ruined Burning Man.

