デイヴ
On the one hand, I am vaguely trying to resist the 2023 Social Media Hominis' inclination to revel in a schadenfreude that feels a little too close to reactionary bitterness for comfort…
On the other hand, it is very difficult feeling bad for the people currently wading in the mud at #BurningMan…
I went to BM a couple times. Last time was in 2000 (#fuckme). And it already felt on the edge of being a played-out event co-opted by commercial interests and a privileged minority… 1/x
デイヴ
To close that random tangent and loop back to the initial (weak) point: while there is way too much reactionary current under the ongoing schadenfreude wave, #BurningMan has turned into enough of a privileged white tech-bro playground that it's perfectly fine not feeling too bad for burners forced to wade in the mud, survive on cereal bars, and piss in a bucket for a couple days… If anything, that's what this thing was all about in the first place. 🙃
5/5 [bonus extra thread below]
デイヴ
one more thought:
While certainly less of a dystopian Silicon Valley playground at the time, it should be noted that #BurningMan had a strong streak of hardcore libertarian gun-nuts at its core, from its very inception.
A big appeal of moving it to the desert, was the possibility of doing stupid potentially-dangerous shit. Back then (1997~1998?) a lot of the same people organised *other*, smaller, get-together around Black Rock desert, exclusively geared at blowing stuff up…
6/5
デイヴ
There is also something fundamentally unfair in berating people's pursuit of hedonistic escapism in the 2020s, on the ground that the world is (quite literally) on fire… when the very people responsible for that state of things, partied like there was no tomorrow, all throughout the late 20th century.
Or at least there *would be*, if #BurningMan did not skew heavily toward older, affluent, and overall insulated privileged people…
4/x
デイヴ
Through the 2010s, I witnessed random friends and acquaintances suddenly turning into hardcore #burners after going for the first time… Including old SF friends who would have never been caught dead hanging out at that hippie rave, back in the 1990s.
I always made a conscious effort not to draw now-vs-then comparison or engage in not-what-it-used-to-be moaning: as long as people had a good time (and perhaps experienced some amount of cultural/spiritual epiphany) → 🥳
2/x
デイヴ
But all the same: it made me feel ever so slightly sad, every time I read random mainstream news pieces lumping together the gloriously anarchic, unabashedly-queer, joyously artistic crowds of late 90s #burningMan setting up tents on the playa, with douchey SF tech bros flying private jets to a private camp with full-catering…
Even now, I am sure attendees run a wide gamut of social and cultural backgrounds, but pricing etc. clearly tilt the scale toward privilege.
3/x
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