Is #BurningMan just rich & wealthy people LARPing struggle?
#QT - https://mastodon.social/@caseynewton/111030308802368771
@Decad3nce, to answer your question simply: nope.
It’s sad that there are so many articles that focus only on the rich folks who show up at #BurningMan without covering the huge numbers of participants who don’t fit that description, who work and save and struggle just to get there and join their community, to do something beautiful… and who themselves have a dim view of wealthy folks who just jump in without giving back.
The burners that I know are evenly split between career professionals and wage earners, and one of the most amazing thing about the community is how it brings them all together, to help each other out.
But so many articles would have readers believe burning is just about rich people hanging out on the playa.
It’s far from an accurate picture of the community and event.
@Decad3nce oh, I’m not claiming any goal. I’m simply saying what they do; I’m not going to speculate about why they do what they do.
I mean, I could, but I’m holding off on it :)
Yes, there are folks attending the event that are jerks. And a lot of others at the event emphatically call them out, and there’s a general social norm in the community that calls them out.
It’s wrong to judge the whole thing by a few jerks that the norms of the event actively reject, though.
@volkris @Decad3nce Bingo. Conflating the Burn being (obviously) affected by climate change with the Burn being a meaningful *cause* of climate change is spectacularly dumb. And universalising the experience of rich wankers is ignorant. Nobody laughed harder at the idea of Diplo and Chris Rock trudging down gate road than the other 70,000 of us there.
Right but given the reporting over the years I can understand why people think that Burning Man is nothing but rich wankers these days.
People who don’t hear anything other than the reports about the rich people there won’t realize that there is so much more to it, which is a bit unfortunate, and I’m not sure how to respond to that other than pushing back a bit when it comes up.
@volkris @Decad3nce Yeah, I know–hence my Gell-Mann amnesia effect comment earlier. Really highlights the abysmal quality of The Discourse in general.
Burning Man is not a silicon valley event, though. People from across the country, and across the world, come together to make it happen.
This is what I’m talking about, the misleading descriptions of the event that really don’t reflect what it is.
@volkris it's not misleading when those are the people that evangelize it.
Don't ignore that my original post here is about specifically that.
Are you saying that when listening to rich people talk about Burning Man you end up hearing that Burning Man is about rich people?
I mean the people that I know personally that I hear evangelizing it all the time, they are incredibly critical against those rich folks and that image of the event.
If I understand your reply correctly, it sounds like you are getting a very misleading image of the event because you are listening to people who present a misleading image of the event, which just makes sense.
@volkris To a lot of people, being able to take a week off and go to the desert is only an opportunity reserved for the rich, so the perception of what your describing is relative.
Secondly, how else am I supposed to derive what happens there if not from first hand accounts like the interview in this podcast?
Well if you’re actually interested in the topic, there are communities around the country that are very welcoming, and you could go hang out with them to see what it’s like from their perspectives.
If I remember right the website has a list of ways to get involved with the community outside of the event. Burns like this are 100% built on people bringing their talents and efforts to the gathering, they are not like a show put on that people show up to, so communities are always looking for more people to join and get involved and contribute.
But to address your point, not everybody goes for an entire week, a lot of people show up for just a day or two as they can, and also for a lot of participants this is the one big thing that they save up for the whole year, saving all of their vacation days just to have this homecoming sort of experience.
Like I probably said above, I’m not a Burning Man sort of person myself, but I know a ton of people who are, so I am very well aware of friends saying they can’t do this or that because they are saving it all up for the big burn.
And just to give one illustration, last week my friends were all sharing a meme about TikTok influencers not being able to fulfill the contracts to broadcast from the event because of the flooding, just highlighting how SO many people at the event utterly reject the rich and the influencers as being anathema to the spirit of Burning Man.
@volkris I appreciate that context, and I bet there are well meaning people involved, but it still doesn't diminish that some of the experiences ARE these rich people coming to hang out and party in the playa (there's a pop up airport for private planes!).
I also disagree that theres some media goal to misrepresenting things, the linked podcast episode is a first person account from one of those rich people that was there. The story is directly from him.