Burning Man

Did Burning Man jump the shark this year?

No.

Did the green man theme suck? Yes.
Have BM themes always sucked? Pretty much yes. Floating world was cool, but that was about it.
Does the next theme suck? Yes!
Was it a mistake to let corporations come in and show their green shit? Yes.

Burning Man LLC, please back off from the commercial shit, that is the one angle that gets people all pissy. Burning Man won't allow others any leeway on commercial presence, so why should the LLC get an exception? Please act consistently!

This was just another theme fuck up -- much like the previous theme fuck ups. But Burning Man is good about learning from its mistakes, so I am quite curious to see what will happen next year. (I've found that years after major shake-ups only the die hard burners attend and that makes the event much better -- I'm looking forward to it already!)

Was Burning Man green? Hell no. I think BM could make the event a hell of a lot of greener by bringing in a power line from Gerlach and providing power for the city, rather than every tom dick and harry bringing in their own polluting crap-ass generator. That single act would reduce emissions more than any other act on the playa. And all those RVs? If it wasn't for Burning Man some other yahoos would be driving them around the country during that week -- at Burning Man those beasts are at least parked for the duration and not belching crap.

Has Burning Man fundamentally changed this year? No. We didn't have a man for a couple of days, but no one I knew was really bothered by that. I personally don't know anyone who left because they were "distraught" by the burning of the man. If anything it was a refreshing change from the previous years.

Do I agree with Paul Addis that Burning Man has no value left? No. It clearly does not have the same values that it had in the mid-90s or even the late 90s after some serious changes. If you come to Burning Man looking for the drive-by shooting range, I'm sorry you're living in the wrong decade. If you come to find amazing art that you can't find in any art gallery on the planet, you're in the right place. If you want amazing people who will go to amazing lengths to connect and party with fellow human beings, you're still in the right place.

I think that Mr. Addis is clinging on to old ideals for too long. You can't go back to the early 90s -- that dot com fantasy period is not coming back and his burning the man early doesn't help change burning man back into something it grew out of. I think Mr. Addis displayed some lapses in judgement when he set the man ablaze -- afterall he is a lawyer and should've understood the consequences of his actions. He violated the artists who created the man (and the irony is that he was on the man team in 97) and put people at risk and I think that was wrong. But, I do appreciate the wake of his action to get people to look up for a minute and examine the fiasco of the green man theme.

Burning Man is an amazing organization that learns quickly compared other organizations. Over the last 14 burns I've witnessed Burning Man make a number of mistakes, only to recover from these mistakes with amazing speed and grace. My personal metric for whether or not Burning Man is still worthwhile is this: Does Burning Man still learn from its mistakes and improve the event for next year?

So far that has been the case. Expect to see me on the playa until that changes.

Now I need to think about how I can subvert the crappy "American Dream" theme for next year. I recently witnessed a people's revolt over the nearly identical theme on a much smaller scale. The subverted theme was much more strongly present than the official theme and I think we need to pull this for next year as to get the Burning Man theme choosing body to wake up and stop making mistakes.

Posted by Mayhem at September 5, 2007 01:10 PM