Burning Man, the desert confab that descended into chaos over the weekend, isn't quite the scrappy, free-spirited revelry that it once was.
Here's the deal: By Tuesday, a mass exodus was under way out of Black Rock City, where some 70,000 Burning Man attendees got stranded in ankle-deep mud over the weekend. Many on the ground broadcast their plight on social media, describing the situation as a "Lord of the Flies vibe."
They didn't find much sympathy. *Cue a million tiny violins.
For many watching the disarray of Burning Man from afar, its ugly final days symbolized how far the event has diverged from its roots.
Or, more simply: how the billionaires ruined Burning Man.
A bit of history...
The festival began as a small gathering in 1986 on a San Francisco beach, and eventually grew into a gritty countercultural community of "Burners" who eschew commercialism within their makeshift city, erected annually in a desiccated lake bed known as the playa.
There's no money trading hands on the playa — that's core to the community's "decommodification" ethos. But there is, increasingly, a lot of money on the playa.
For wealthy tech bros, going to Burning Man is akin to having climbed Everest or taken ayahuasca on a meditation retreat — a spiritually transformative experience (slash networking event), undertaken with a considerable safety net of privilege.
Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person, has been a regular at Burning Man, telling Recode in 2014 that "if you haven't been, you just don't get it." Mark Zuckerberg flew in for a day in 2012. And in 2018, shortly after she was indicted on federal fraud charges, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes retreated to the desert and burned an effigy for her failed startup, she told the New York Times.
Roughing it
One of the 10 pillars of Burning Man is "radical self-reliance," and in that spirit most revelers haul their own water and food in for the week. They're encouraged to "rely on their inner resources" for survival, according to the organization's website.
For the one-percenters in attendance, however, self-reliance can be easily outsourced.
The ultra-wealthy have been known to fly in personal chefs for the week, and pay as much as $50,000 to camp in luxurious tents, as the New York Post reported in 2019. "Fancy camps" around the playa have been adorned with chandeliers, party rooms and outdoor showers.
Speaking to the Times in 2014, one attendee whose camp included Silicon Valley and Hollywood elite said the fees for that camp were $25,000 per person.
Cue the schadenfreude
From the sidelines, the temptation to delight in the burners' misfortune was powerful. After all, they paid to be there — tickets range from $575 to $2,750, not including a car pass or travel to the remote campsite 100 miles north of Reno.
The sight of wealthy, glamorous people stuck in a mud prison of their own making stirred something deep in the internet's soul.
"Burning Man is the perfect example of how many rich White people recreationally manufacture hardship because they are immune from it systematically," wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter.
The event, another X user said, has been taken over by "rich people LARPing as hippies for a week."
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