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)
> ...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)
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 fit the scale and culture of the participants.
He also neglected to mention that Larry Harvey attended up through his death, afaik. Or how deeply affected the city was the year Larry died.
Or that the man design was done for so long by a close collaborator of Larry’s. And that the man base has been frequently spectacular both on fire and not.
The historical perspective and old photos are great but I’m not much for the conclusion. I would be willing to bet the title and byline are editorialized by the publisher.
You can still go out there with not much, be new and participate and just smile at some famous or not person also on their way back from the Portos.
There is a lot of money involved, no doubt and there is a lot of bullshit too, like art cars that do fundraisers and take volunteer contributions only to remain largely private vessels for a particular crew, a few celebs etc.
And there’s a lot to not like about the org or how art grants are handled, it’s a big system it has the exploits and nepotism that might infect anything scaled and offering power.
But if you go and do not look closely and just give in small ways none of that would likely be visible to you.
You could have the time of your life. Or not. Which I think suggests the opportunity for adventure and chaos still remains at that thing in the desert.
Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been personally.
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? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
I looked a bit into the author. His friend unfortunately died at Burning Man in 1996, as did two other people. Since then, he left and has been an advocate for shutting down Burning Man. They fought over the name for 10 years after that.
> ...and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
I'm biased and a bit amusingly jaded because I left the US many years ago and have been living overseas for a long time, so take my next paragraph with that context.
Have you been to a Mexican ranchero wedding that lasts several days? Enjoyed a weekend BBQ in a Filipino province? Been invited by a bunch of 60 and 70-somethings in a small town in Vietnam who don't speak English to sing karaoke with them?
Enjoying life doesn't have to be a monumental, once-a-year event, and it shouldn't be.
You can't just post an article about pollution and use that as a trump card.
The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM.
I get it, 70,000 people in one spot creates trash and pollution. But we all are, every minute of every day. In the grand scheme of things, Burning Man is _not_ the problem.
Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes? I agree meeting locals is a ton of fun and should be a part of everyone's life. But if a bunch of people want to go to a desert and hang out for a week, why do you care?
> The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article...
Did you even read the article? It stated very clearly:
> With organizers themselves estimating that Burning Man emits 100,000 tons of carbon every year, it is clear things cannot stay the same on the playa.
100,000 tons total. Please don't cherry-pick one part of the article to make a point.
> ...and they clean up after themselves...
Except, if you actually did the research, you would know that there are lots of reports of trash being dumped in nearby towns, including Reno and Tahoe. It's not the straightforward "they clean up after themselves" you make it out to be.
> Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes?
Who took anything to an extreme? Most of my comment was pointing out that in much of the world, particularly in places where people have way less, they find a way to enjoy life and have fun without events that have the environmental impact of a Burning Man.
I'm not calling for Burning Man to be banned. But what I think is extreme is the idea that, because the "world kinda sucks", the solution is for people to take a few days out of the year to go into the desert and let loose. Have a monthly BBQ with friends. Sing karaoke on the weekend. Take a hike every Sunday. Those things will contribute way more to a durable enjoyment of life than a Burning Man.
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.
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.
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 mean she is the CEO title, but even then she's still making more than MOST of the non-profits getting city contracts in SF. She makes 400k. The revenue for Burning Man is about 40 million you can compare here too.
Ex: Healthright 360 has 1600 employees and makes $145 million in revenue and it's CEO is still paid less than her. They provide healthcare and other types of care for people without insurance.
300k would put you in the top 5% of households and 3-4x the median, let alone single earners. You are absolutely beyond “comfortably middle class” with that salary.
And we have not included the spouse's income at all (assuming with kids there is a spousal income)
Unless you don't define middle class as the percentile between 25 and 75, then it's markedly above middle class.
Incomes in SF are skewed though because housing costs vary wildly. Some people are below the median income but have rent control or property tax so low that they pay basically nothing for housing.
Nawh, not even. The truth is it takes 550k/yr TC to buy a basic house ($1.6M) in exactly the neighborhood where I grew up in scrubby yards and broken sidewalks south San José. In SF, it takes 720k TC to afford a regular house ($2.5M). Boomer and Greatest generations got Prop 13 extra low property taxes (like $1064/y because it's 1.4% on $76k valuation) and then everyone else pays 1.4%/y (14k) on a million+ house at market value.
No it does not take $550k/yr to buy a $1.6M house. But all this will vary based on your timelines what your nest egg currently looks like, etc.
But also, you don't have to buy a house. Median rent, groceries, car payment, etc. in San Jose aren't gonna run you more than like $7k/mo. After taxes on your income you should have about $100k after essentials are all paid for. That's more than enough to basically live whatever life you want.
And funny enough, John Law himself has basically been saying the same thing since the late '90s. He's been shaking his fist at this particular cloud for over twenty-five years, so I'm not sure why an opinion piece like this is even noteworthy at this point.
FWIW, for a lot of us, the magic is still there. Most of the city exists outside of the shiny Instagram influencers that seem to dominate the narrative. We're still there being gross and building shit for the joy of it with our friends.
>A community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area.
>"I'm asking for your help crowdfunding the most ambitious Burning Man project ever a wall that's built around the entire bay area during the week of Burning Man."
Honestly, a pretty incredible article. Yeah, this is what happens. And even so, as he said himself, the newbies continue to find themselves and the proles continue to gather to connect and reconnect.
I imagine many here feel convicted because they see themselves in Law’s descriptions of the well-heeled elite, and they resent Law for saying they are not transgressive instigators, anarchic fire starters, and autonomous free zone inhabitants.
Y’all. Be comfortable with who you are. Most of us just want good money, an awesome time with cool computer shit to do, and friends and family who love us. It’s okay not to be a revolutionary. What’s not okay is to trick yourself into believing you are one when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here’s to the revolutionaries - I get to live a more grounded life because of their willingness to live outside the lines.
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?
It might be true technically, but I've been about a dozen times and in my memories of the place it can often be hard for me to determine which ones happened on which year.
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.
I've known this for awhile, since at least 2020. Specifically when they told a documentarian he could film and then threatened litigation if he released his film — after he had already shot it. He had to painstakingly blur literally all Burning Man footage except for the guy he's following around.
It's probably a liability from the nudity. Someone says "that's me! I didn't consent to my naked body being posted on the Internet!". Even if it was incidental, but if it was allowed, it would bring about a bunch of perverts a-la "girls done wild: burning man '26".
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.
Zuckerberg and the like started going and wouldn't dare behave the ordinary peasants, by sleeping in tents, participating in the community, bartering for things.
instead they just threw money at the event so they wouldn't have to do the things that made burning man, burning man.
I work at a financial company and around 2019, the break room had a magazine called “Meetings” with a front-page article about how burning man and sxsw are the next big thing in corporate culture.
> Heck Zuckerberg took a helicopter there one year.
The vast majority of the people I knew who flew in weren’t rich like Zuck, they just liked flying. It’s the only way to get a wristband that allows you to come and go at will (i.e. to run logistics for a camp) and avoid exodus if you had to leave that day.
15 years ago no one gave a damn about the rich people going to burning man. They were isolated in their camps. We were much more concerned with keeping our Sparkle Ponies alive.
Worth reading Dustin's personal account of his Burning Man experience: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/radical-inclusion-vs-radical-self... (bear in mind this was written 13 years ago, I'm not sure Dustin would agree with everything stated, but the broad strokes feel correct.)
That post also explains Zuck's attendance. Zuck is not a Burner, it was a one-off visit encouraged by Dustin. Personally I think it was inconsequential in the long run but good for Zuck to have seen it.
The criticism you're raising about money being thrown at the event is broadly valid, but it does not at all apply to how Dustin approached it, IMO. Dustin did precisely what you are suggesting he didn't - slept in a tent, literally cooked and served grilled cheese sandwiches.
(Context: I was in the camp/village, attended 10 years 2009-2018, back once in 2025, have done a lot of playa art... and I also broadly agree with John Law's take.)
What are you talking 'corporate' - there are no corporate sponsors, and people having been coming in with their big camp A/C rvs for 25 years at least.
There's an airport there for 30 years - people have been flying airplanes and helicoptors forever.
san francisco had that cool, edgy, gonzo art scene happening in the 90s. also survival research laboratories and their famous pitching machine, the omnicircus, chicken john, laughing squid, critical mass/commute clot. similar things in brooklyn in the '00s like the madagascar institute, black label bike club, idiotarod, etc.
in the 2000s, there was kind of an interesting tech meets countercultural art thing where a lot of the more interesting tech people would pour their disposable income into interesting burning man art projects (nimby's ddi, jabba's sail barge) but it does seem like in recent years with the real sf affordability crisis that came with internet business actually taking off the creativity went down and the money seeking people showed up. i guess that's also true of sf (and brooklyn) more generally.
it was a fun time. i was a swe intern in the mid 90s and would marvel when the engineering team would disappear to the desert for a week and come back with colored hair. my boss drove a psychedelic school bus to work sometimes. in south of market on 6th street in sf, there was a building that had furniture welded onto the exterior like it had all come to life and was trying to escape the building.
It is extremely evil that you founded something called burning man. It is extremely horrible to say that, people used to be burned alive all the time and it’s pure evil that you would ever start something like that. You should be ashamed of yourself. You think it’s funny, but it’s not funny to people who died that way.
I started going in 2002 and have friends who have gone every year since then.
There has been a meme that burning man sucks now and used to be better that entire time.
That doesn't mean the meme is false. It definitely has changed. There's an article in sfgate today that quotes the head of the Death Guild (Thunderdome) camp as saying something like, do people want to carry on the traditions their parents had, or invent their own?
I thought that was a great question. Both are valid paths.
Festivals are big business now. Boomers and Gen Xers have money to spend and spend they do trying to recapture their youth. Hundreds of dollars for passes. Hundreds more spent on food and drink. Times tens or hundreds of thousands of attendees.
Nothing can maintain its essence over time, things change and morph. If you want something scrappy you’re going to have to start over with something new until it too eventually ends up the same way.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 68.7 ms ] threadNot 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
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 fit the scale and culture of the participants.
Or that the man design was done for so long by a close collaborator of Larry’s. And that the man base has been frequently spectacular both on fire and not.
The historical perspective and old photos are great but I’m not much for the conclusion. I would be willing to bet the title and byline are editorialized by the publisher.
You can still go out there with not much, be new and participate and just smile at some famous or not person also on their way back from the Portos.
There is a lot of money involved, no doubt and there is a lot of bullshit too, like art cars that do fundraisers and take volunteer contributions only to remain largely private vessels for a particular crew, a few celebs etc.
And there’s a lot to not like about the org or how art grants are handled, it’s a big system it has the exploits and nepotism that might infect anything scaled and offering power.
But if you go and do not look closely and just give in small ways none of that would likely be visible to you.
You could have the time of your life. Or not. Which I think suggests the opportunity for adventure and chaos still remains at that thing in the desert.
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? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/burnin...
> ...and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.
I'm biased and a bit amusingly jaded because I left the US many years ago and have been living overseas for a long time, so take my next paragraph with that context.
Have you been to a Mexican ranchero wedding that lasts several days? Enjoyed a weekend BBQ in a Filipino province? Been invited by a bunch of 60 and 70-somethings in a small town in Vietnam who don't speak English to sing karaoke with them?
Enjoying life doesn't have to be a monumental, once-a-year event, and it shouldn't be.
The pollution that comes from the Burning Man artwork, which is the crux of that article, is less than one plane from JFK to SFO. If we're going to complain about anything, the flights to Burning Man dwarf the actual event. But even then, the week of Burning Man, only 0.03% of travel will be people going to BM.
I get it, 70,000 people in one spot creates trash and pollution. But we all are, every minute of every day. In the grand scheme of things, Burning Man is _not_ the problem.
Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes? I agree meeting locals is a ton of fun and should be a part of everyone's life. But if a bunch of people want to go to a desert and hang out for a week, why do you care?
Burning Man is completely discretionary, you need to compute the total discretionary carbon footprint, and then the BM carbon footprint
If we're going down the list of things to get upset about, Burning Man is pretty far down the list.
Let people have fun.
Did you even read the article? It stated very clearly:
> With organizers themselves estimating that Burning Man emits 100,000 tons of carbon every year, it is clear things cannot stay the same on the playa.
100,000 tons total. Please don't cherry-pick one part of the article to make a point.
> ...and they clean up after themselves...
Except, if you actually did the research, you would know that there are lots of reports of trash being dumped in nearby towns, including Reno and Tahoe. It's not the straightforward "they clean up after themselves" you make it out to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/07/burning-man-...
https://www.rgj.com/story/life/arts/burning-man/2023/09/06/b...
> Why can't everyone just do what they want without us taking it to the extremes?
Who took anything to an extreme? Most of my comment was pointing out that in much of the world, particularly in places where people have way less, they find a way to enjoy life and have fun without events that have the environmental impact of a Burning Man.
I'm not calling for Burning Man to be banned. But what I think is extreme is the idea that, because the "world kinda sucks", the solution is for people to take a few days out of the year to go into the desert and let loose. Have a monthly BBQ with friends. Sing karaoke on the weekend. Take a hike every Sunday. Those things will contribute way more to a durable enjoyment of life than a Burning Man.
Both things can be true.
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...
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
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/nonprofit-ceo-co...
Ex: Healthright 360 has 1600 employees and makes $145 million in revenue and it's CEO is still paid less than her. They provide healthcare and other types of care for people without insurance.
And we have not included the spouse's income at all (assuming with kids there is a spousal income)
Unless you don't define middle class as the percentile between 25 and 75, then it's markedly above middle class.
Incomes in SF are skewed though because housing costs vary wildly. Some people are below the median income but have rent control or property tax so low that they pay basically nothing for housing.
But also, you don't have to buy a house. Median rent, groceries, car payment, etc. in San Jose aren't gonna run you more than like $7k/mo. After taxes on your income you should have about $100k after essentials are all paid for. That's more than enough to basically live whatever life you want.
> Many participants tell me this is the last year the event will be bearable before it "goes commercial."
https://www.sfgate.com/style/article/Communal-art-in-the-des...
FWIW, for a lot of us, the magic is still there. Most of the city exists outside of the shiny Instagram influencers that seem to dominate the narrative. We're still there being gross and building shit for the joy of it with our friends.
(I'm still not used to easy internet access at BRC, he says as he browses HN from his camp)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO_r6ndZRZY&t=1s
>A community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area.
>"I'm asking for your help crowdfunding the most ambitious Burning Man project ever a wall that's built around the entire bay area during the week of Burning Man."
Leave No Trace.
I imagine many here feel convicted because they see themselves in Law’s descriptions of the well-heeled elite, and they resent Law for saying they are not transgressive instigators, anarchic fire starters, and autonomous free zone inhabitants.
Y’all. Be comfortable with who you are. Most of us just want good money, an awesome time with cool computer shit to do, and friends and family who love us. It’s okay not to be a revolutionary. What’s not okay is to trick yourself into believing you are one when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here’s to the revolutionaries - I get to live a more grounded life because of their willingness to live outside the lines.
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?
https://www.blurringman.org/blurring-man
I've known this for awhile, since at least 2020. Specifically when they told a documentarian he could film and then threatened litigation if he released his film — after he had already shot it. He had to painstakingly blur literally all Burning Man footage except for the guy he's following around.
Zuckerberg and the like started going and wouldn't dare behave the ordinary peasants, by sleeping in tents, participating in the community, bartering for things.
instead they just threw money at the event so they wouldn't have to do the things that made burning man, burning man.
The vast majority of the people I knew who flew in weren’t rich like Zuck, they just liked flying. It’s the only way to get a wristband that allows you to come and go at will (i.e. to run logistics for a camp) and avoid exodus if you had to leave that day.
15 years ago no one gave a damn about the rich people going to burning man. They were isolated in their camps. We were much more concerned with keeping our Sparkle Ponies alive.
Worth reading Dustin's personal account of his Burning Man experience: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/radical-inclusion-vs-radical-self... (bear in mind this was written 13 years ago, I'm not sure Dustin would agree with everything stated, but the broad strokes feel correct.)
That post also explains Zuck's attendance. Zuck is not a Burner, it was a one-off visit encouraged by Dustin. Personally I think it was inconsequential in the long run but good for Zuck to have seen it.
The criticism you're raising about money being thrown at the event is broadly valid, but it does not at all apply to how Dustin approached it, IMO. Dustin did precisely what you are suggesting he didn't - slept in a tent, literally cooked and served grilled cheese sandwiches.
(Context: I was in the camp/village, attended 10 years 2009-2018, back once in 2025, have done a lot of playa art... and I also broadly agree with John Law's take.)
Rainbow Gathering is barter-based.
There's an airport there for 30 years - people have been flying airplanes and helicoptors forever.
in the 2000s, there was kind of an interesting tech meets countercultural art thing where a lot of the more interesting tech people would pour their disposable income into interesting burning man art projects (nimby's ddi, jabba's sail barge) but it does seem like in recent years with the real sf affordability crisis that came with internet business actually taking off the creativity went down and the money seeking people showed up. i guess that's also true of sf (and brooklyn) more generally.
it was a fun time. i was a swe intern in the mid 90s and would marvel when the engineering team would disappear to the desert for a week and come back with colored hair. my boss drove a psychedelic school bus to work sometimes. in south of market on 6th street in sf, there was a building that had furniture welded onto the exterior like it had all come to life and was trying to escape the building.
> Name is John Law
Makes sense.
There has been a meme that burning man sucks now and used to be better that entire time.
That doesn't mean the meme is false. It definitely has changed. There's an article in sfgate today that quotes the head of the Death Guild (Thunderdome) camp as saying something like, do people want to carry on the traditions their parents had, or invent their own?
I thought that was a great question. Both are valid paths.
That's daycare for adults, not an experience.
Where are your modern alternative festis or something else? Where is the the modern counter culture? What on earth is a counter culture nowadays?
Its fucking doom scrolling shite that my peers dump on you!