Why is everyone so giddy about the flooding thay happened at burning man?
Social media seems to be laughing its ass off about this tragedy, is it because the folks at burning man are perceived as frivolous hippies or something? Everyone I’ve ever met who was a regular burning man attendee has been a solid human being with strong morals, personally and financially responsible, a career. Upstanding members of society for sure. I guess all some people know is the sensationalized drugs and sex. A person died. This is a tragedy for an event that brings positivity into the world. Kind of annoyed.
Burning Man 'promotes' anti-consumerism and communal effort, however attending requires significant financial resources and costs that can and do exclude (most) people, it's living hyprocracy, and an excellent example of capitalism corrupting grass roots ideals. honestly is an absolute joke of a festival.
There is a similar thing not far from where I live. Through an unlucky friend, then the neighbour of their festival grounds, I got to discover the organizers' 'ideals' and 'ethical and ecological approach' first hand. In short: it was about money. And more money. And they managed to turn a large reservoir into a dying punch bowl of acid, piss and shit within only a decade. I suspect Burning Man to be the same, considering the ticket prices. The fact that some poor fools with their heart and soul intact save their little money to visit this monstrosity just makes it more sad.
I don't actively engage in Schadenfreude much, but I do carry a little of it in my heart. If people think flying or driving very far away for Entertainment, and bringing thousands of people into an otherwise quiet place is okay for the wildlife there, and can be in any way an ecological thing, they have understood very little about ecology. And now also ignored by most: the destruction that happens by the thousands of 'poor humans who just wanted to have fun' trampling through the last remnants of life in a drought stricken place.
We are not alone on this planet. Invading a place with our idea of fun is very damaging. We can party perfectly well at home. If home happens to be bleak and sad maybe we should work on that first before invading quiet places.
Just as a counterpoint, the area burning man is held in is one of the most ecologically inert places you could go. There's no vegetation and the only life to speak of is brine shrimp eggs, which are about as threatened as mosquito larvae.
There's still a lot of trash that gets left behind which can travel with wind, but as far as impact on the land goes, it's likely significantly less invasive than your local county fair. There's just nothing out there for them to damage.
No it doesn't. Poor as dirt and go almost every year. So many idiots in this thread have no idea what they're talking about. Just parroting the media.
It's like $400 for a ticket, and then the rest of the cost is getting there, food, water, shelter, etc. You can pay as little or as much as you want to accomplish those things. Plenty of people drive there and stayed in tents. I don't see how it's any different than camping for a few days.
Because I can go camp somewhere for less than $100?
Lmao I've camped for free just by pitching a tent off the side of a secluded road.
I was calculating in gear costs too tbh.
check again it was up to $575 this year
Ive never been to burning man. I went to Coachella a LLOOONNGG time ago when it was hippies rolling around in the dust. Coachella ain't that anymore, it's instagram rich kids and tech bros. I assume the same thing has happened to burning man.
Some of the worst people I've worked with are "burners".
There's apparently a private jet at burning man this year that was taking off and landing constantly so that people could fuck on the jet - it's fall of Rome style excess in a broken world where most people's basic needs are not met on an enormous scale.
Your statement is fairly tone deaf to the basic objective reality of the "party", OP. The frustrated people at the bottom are feeling a bit of catharsis in the money burning factory closing for a day while they starve and watch.
So like "let's fly on private jets to a nice swiss resort to discuss climate change"
aside from the obvious "rich people exploiting the environment with their hippy party that costs $200 for their cheapest tickets," I saw a video online that brought up a good point that I never considered. The cost of lumber has increased exponentially in the past 3 years alone, jumping to nearly $1700 per 1000 feet at its peak in 2021, but staying between $400 and $600 per 1000 feet in recent months (still high compared to say 10 years ago.) And these people are buying tens of thousands of feet of lumber solely to burn it away in the middle of nowhere where there's little vegetation to absorb the excess CO2 waste. That, along with the climate change protesters being police brutalized just before the event, really puts a sour taste in people's mouths. Especially in a time where "once in a lifetime" weather events seem to be back-to-back.
economic data from: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber
Tickets cost about 10x that. I was interested back when it was a cool art exchange, freedom event. But SO many people flock to it as a giant party that it's become restrictive unless your volunteering or bringing an exhibit.
From old burners I have talked to, the entire experience has completely changed. Alcohol used to be frowned upon, now it's common place.
Sincerely with rocket launches now being a daily thing i'm not very worried by that burning lumber.
Rockets mostly use hydrogen as fuel, burning wood is way more polluting than burning hydrogren.
Also John Wilson tried to go shoot at the event and after compiling hours of footage was told that he couldn't use any of it because there was some exclusive licensed coverage provider for the event.
That's not really how plants work.
Photosynthesis turns co2 + water into sugar + oxygen. Cellular respiration turns sugar + oxygen into co2 + water.
The total co2 absorbed by a plant is exactly equal to the amount of co2 used to make all the sugar, cellulose, etc. the plant currently has. Digestion, decomposition, fires etc. undo that.
A mature forest or lawn is carbon neutral: new growth is balanced out by decomposition of old growth.
Distance to plants doesn't matter. What matters is if and how the trees they're burning are being replanted or replaced. .
Thanks for the correction. That helps me better understand how counteracting pollution works
Yesterday in the US it was labour day, 100 of millions of Americans has a BBQ many using coal and wood the impact of burning man is insignificant in comparison
Burning Man may be the epitome of the many optimistic and maybe naive qualities of the 90s that were co-opted and exploited in the early 2000s, and turned into the very things they were built to protest against - another being the free and open internet
Yes. I watched it happen. The large number of people that go now pay thousands $$ for a plug-n-play camp and don't contribute their own art (if they even have art). They are not what the festival once stood for.
Because it's a festival in the middle of the fucking desert. It's an utterly ridiculous place to have it and totally extravagant.
They'll go there claiming there to be going I to some kind of getting away from civilisation, hippie commune thing but the amount of effort and infrastructure to make that environment survivable is ridiculous they actually doing more damage to the environment by being there than if they just stayed in the city.
No one's glad someone died but their death has nothing to do with the ultimate problem of them all being there, and without being too macabre, people die music festivals all of the time, usually because of drugs. Most music festivals are held in a field, where it's at least reasonably possible to have basic infrastructure without huge expenses of money and effort.
I’ve been to burning man. I sit a little bit on both sides of the fence having not felt like I totally fit in there when I went, but also understanding the original mindset behind it.
At this point, I feel the backlash against Burning Man generally is a bit overblown. These folks are at a festival (yeah burners, I called it a festival because that’s the word we use for such things in the English language) and they’re having a good time. Who cares. Most folks who go have good intentions and just want to connect and share something. Many artists work for years and months, for free, to have their pieces featured. Some of that art is incredible! My favorite parts though were literally just an astronomy camp where I looked through a pretty big telescope, held some billion year old meteor fragments in my hand, and listened to hours of lectures from science nerds about the cosmos. I also watched a magic show and got fed bacon by some drunk guy at his camp at 7 am who just wanted company. I personally havent drank at burning man, but it is a party. There are all manner of things at burning man, anything you might want and some things you might not… from talks on how to build a sustainable green energy house to orgy tents to camps offering free ice cream and French toast.
On the other hand, burners can take this shit a bit too seriously and get wrapped up in the experience to the point of being annoying. One guy in my camp scolded me for asking too much about his normal life. He was a tech worker and apparently wanted to pretend that he wasn’t when he was at burning man. How ridiculous to think standing in the desert should mean you can’t talk about your actual life. Another time I pulled out my camera (aka phone) to take a photo of some art and some random chick yelled at me to put my phone away. As if we all bought DSLRs and Polaroids for this event because it’s more authentic that way, and as if the folks that did totally aren’t going to go home and put it on Instagram anyway. There were plenty of women just posing on the playa for their photographer “friends.” I doubt they all just put them in a family photo album for the memories.
That said, Burning Man is a unique event and most folks are just trying to share and view some of the most unique art in the world and connect with others. At my age, I generally find most festivals annoying and burning man has plenty of people to be annoyed at, but it is what it is and frankly I don’t know that it deserves more hate than something like Bonaroo or Coachella. At least Burning Man is full of folks trying to be more than mere passive consumers of entertainment. The mandate is for you to be a participant. God forbid you attend an event where you’re asked to do more than consume, but rather give, anything you want or feel others could benefit from.
If there were 10 other events like burning man, I’d say we should look for the best one, but it is the only event like this. That said, as time goes on, it needs to change. Burning the art has to stop, for instance. Also, some of the more snobbish cultural aspects of the event could die off and I wouldn’t cry.
Not sure I’ll ever go back, but its mostly because I’m too old for this shit and seriously get off my lawn. But, I got the idea and, I won’t hate on others who feel drawn to it, unless they’re insufferable.
Well put. I've been twice, 25 years ago and 8 years ago. Some aspects are really cool. Burners can also be insufferable, especially when they make it their entire identity IMO. I will never go back either. Also too old for that shit.
Yeah my SOs mom took us and still goes. We aren't wealthy and usually get discounts. His mom saves up every year for it. The only thing about it I don't like is how dirty it is and how hot otherwise it's really fun and I don't do drugs or alcohol. Fire shooting giant metal flowerbeds and moving castles.
Thanks for your comment, I appreciate it
Aren't there smaller burning man festivals?
There are many copycats and smaller local versions of the same idea. The idea that it's the most unique event in the world is marketing BS form the organizers.
there's definitely a few different ones in Oregon.
Most people don’t even think about burning man at all.
And well, the people of the internet tend to be less fond of more wealthy people, like those that can afford to spend thousands to party in the desert. I may not want them to die just because they went to burning man, but I will laugh at the world essentially raining on their parade.
A lot of the time, people hear about Burning Man in the context of which privileged asshole grifter attended it. Elizabeth Holmes, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, etc other billionaires or influencers... And it is described as "tech bros' favorite party" in the media.
So, given that impression of it, I can see how the default reaction to it failing is unsympathetic.
All these people making piles of assumptions that if Elon Musk went once, everyone there must be a rich piece of shit, just makes me want to go even more just to spite them.
I know there's a lot I don't know about it, but what I do know is that for most who go it's about art and being free to express themselves. Really strange how much hate people have for something they likely haven't the first goddamned clue about
Well far be it from me to judge anyone at a music festival but I think for many burning man has some bourgeoisie, fake hippie sorta connotations?
Yep, exactly my confusion…this makes it ok to take joy at what happened? I think the perception is wrong but even if not…it’s fucked up.
When leftists say eat the rich they don't mean it in a nice way.
I think - correctly or incorrectly - a lot of people perceive the typical Burning Man attendee nowadays as being a rich and/or famous person who is somewhere between indifferent to + amused by the suffering of other people less fortunate than they. And - again, not saying this is correct - they perceive this as being more of an annoying/inconvenient/uncomfortable thing (lots of wallowing in filth, but only 1 death AFAIK) than a bona fide natural disaster; totally different order of magnitude from what just happened in Florida, for example, or Hawaii.
So it's less serious than a hurricane or flood or whatever in a populated area, and affects much more deserving people; if, heaven forbid, a bomb went off and hundreds of Burning Man attendees died it would be a very different story, and certainly in that case I don't think any decent person would laugh about it, but a bunch of rich assholes stuck in the mud playing "Survivor" for a week is much more farce than tragedy.
I actually think a lot is the opposite. If you think an event like this, attended by the likes of Bezos and Musk, is countercultural, or even “brings positivity into the world”, I have a beautiful bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Of course most Burners have jobs, it’s a techbro’s dream. Plus, tickets are more expensive than they were in the old days, so real hippies can’t go. If people want to laugh at the suffering of rich people who cosplay as revolutionary, I’m generally ok with that. One big caveat: I’m very sorry someone died, and I don’t think mocking that’s cool, especially if we don’t know anything about them.
The richest people on earth attending doesn't actually mean a single goddamned thing about it. Other than they want to be seen as "cool"...
Well, I guess we strongly disagree.
I'm sure billionaires have once enjoyed every activity you love, which if you were to be consistent, somehow taints all the things you enjoy. Very weird to think that way
An event isn’t an activity. And yes, if an event I loved turned into a meeting place for those people, I’d find a new event.
If Elon Musk and I both enjoyed cycling, for instance, fine. That doesn’t put me in the same space as him. Which is fundamentally different than going to a weeklong party he’s attending. Have your fun, just don’t pretend it’s revolutionary or creating a better world.
It’s just a playground for the riche to do a music and drug festival pretend poor style. Or maybe it has something to do with a bunch of those hippies that nearly killed climate protestors blocking the road on their way in.
Every Burner I’ve ever met has been one of the most entitled, out of touch, morons I’ve ever had the displeasure of talking to. Let’s see where their “radical self reliance” gets them now.
I guess I grew up some next level poor, the only person I’ve known that went to burning man was the son of the owner at a place I worked. He wasn’t that entitled and moronic.
The CEO of one of my companies clients goes there and he's an awful awful person.
Completely unprompted he once said that he was a liberal, but he had to vote conservative because the poorer people in society need the conservatives. So he wasn't even prepared to actually own being an asshole.
And then he goes to a place like that and claims he's going back to nature or some shit, all so he can morally self-justified having a stick up his arse the rest of the time.
I was unemployed both times I went lol. Do people not know about low income discounts?
Low income discounts for festivals, definitely not. I’ve never been aware of anything like that.
The principles are a solid foundation but can be taken for granted depending on income or association. The community is spurred from the principles but still has entitled participants :/ Interesting exercise
Fuck these rich twats
I got shit for this in another thread, but I will stand by it- you do not go into the desert without checking the weather report, and if it says rain, light rain, heavy rain, sprinkles, doesn't matter, you do not go into the desert. These people did not do the most basic bit of safety you could do.
I'm just surprised at the sheer stupidity of those people. There have been pictures on the net, showing the festival area completely submerged just a few days before the start. Yet, they still moved there.
At that point, when they noticed that the mud was knee deep, they could have left. They decided to stay.
Now there is an emergency involving 70k idiots who put themselves wilfully in a dangerous place without thinking.
You’re not traveling in the wrong circles. Come to a VC fund dinner in September where junior VCs and 28-year-old “mortgage disrupter” CEOs brag about the air-conditioned plug-and-play camps they spent tens of thousands on, and play wink-wink with each other about all of the fun they had.
I’m a multiple-time BM vet, but it’s mostly an expensive, bureaucratized drug party for tourists now.
It’s perfectly fine to goof on it as it sinks into a physical and moral quagmire. Forgive a poorly scaled analogy, but your logic is the NRA’s logic when there’s a mass shooting: “Now, when everyone’s attention is focused, is not the time to highlight the underlying issues.”
No one hates the luxury plug-n-play campers more than other burners. And the org has even taken steps to crack down on them.
But the only thing older than non-burners hating on burners is burners saying “it was cooler back in the times when I went. It sucks now.”
What years were you there?
i dont care what happens to rich people
Most of them aren’t rich. They’re middle class. The only reason you think most of them are rich is because of how a lot of the middle class has fallen into poverty. Don’t tear down the people that are still truly middle class.
The truly wealthy are a problem, but they’re a minority at burning man.
It's all relative. If the poor have gotten poorer, then the "almost rich", just by virtue of hanging on to their wealth, have edged up into "rich" territory
Sure, if you want the extremely rich people who actually made you poor to write your narrative for them. Save your anger for the people who actually suppress wages and equity. Not people who just managed to carve out a middle class life by doing some job. Middle class people and poor people are much much closer in wealth to each other than middle class and the truly wealthy who rule this country.
I have plenty of anger to go around, there's no danger of it running out.
Might want to seek professional help for that bud.
It's a rational response to an unjust world, but more importantly I couldn't afford professional help in any case. Which is, again, the point.
Why not be angry at other poor people too then? They deserve it as much as the middle class.
No, they don't.
They do though. Neither one of them deserves your anger. Be angry at the people who actually set up the system that makes you poor. Not the middle class who has as much to blame as the poor.
The middle class didn't set up the system, but they love benefiting from it.
But even then, my main gripe with the middle class is their insistence that they're blameless and they like to pretend they're on the same side as the poor when they're constantly supporting policies to keep the poor poorer.
Yes, the middle class benefits some form the current system. We want a system that benefits all. That doesn’t mean breaking the system for the people who live a comfortable life. It means making the system support a comfortable life for all.
And blaming them as a block is really stupid anyway because they don’t all vote lock step. These divisions along non-ideological divides are a silly distraction meant to keep people fighting people who are actually on the same side.
You're right, and this idiot is falling for the rich people's bullshit 100%.
How do you change a system set up to benefit a class that is completely entrenched around the levers of power, without tearing down the whole rotten structure?
Fuck you and your million dollar mortgage and your 2nd car. We are not on the same side. We just have a common enemy.
You’re acting as a pawn for the wealthy ruling class when you think like that.
call me a skeptic but I doubt there is someone here with a million dollar mortgage and multiple cars that's just sitting around, reading lemmy.
Like what, they're reading a thread on lemmy on the way to a business meeting in their private car?
Like who are you really yelling at.
What a useless bullshit excuse to be hateful and averse to any actual solution whatsoever
Never said I was averse to solutions. I can be hateful and also want to fix the problems.
Yeah the real way to fix capitalism is to hate people with 20% more money than you. Great plan.
I mean the middle class are pretty adverse to the solution as well...
Oh what a cool and hip communist everyone. Look so edgy
wow imagine needing to take sides..
If you're spending upwards of $1000 on a few days you're probably rich.
What the hell. That classifies almost anyone who goes on vacation as rich.
Like a 3rd of the world live in near starvation, objectively if you can afford a vacation you are in the richest 25% in the world.
Have you considered that the majority of people can't afford to go on vacations? Heck, in the US most people aren't even entitled to vacations by law. If they want to rest they have to stop working altogether and pray they are accepted back at their workplace when they return and to not have any emergency and their meager savings last for the entire short break from the grind.
Really, some people have no notion of privilege.
Or it's very important to you and you saved all year. What a weird assumption
It means you’re not poor if you can afford to go on a vacation that costs a few thousand dollars. That’s middle class. People have normalized lowering the standard of living associates with middle class, but being able to spend a few thousand dollars on a vacation is where the middle class should be and used to be.
I'm sure some middle class people can afford to go to burning man. But you're being wilfully ignorant if you think burning man isn't catered to the rich. It's almost purely a status symbol event. It's definitely where people go to show off their lavish wealth and take pictures for Instagram. I'm pretty sure if they took a survey 80%+ would be wealthy people.
I'm middle class, and I'm spending a couple hundred dollars on my holiday this week, I almost can't fathom spending thousands living in a tent in a desert.
But you're right, the middle class has been eroded. What was considered middle class in 1970 would be rich today. That's just because most people are worse off financially.
Well, how do you define middle class? Is there a certain income bracket that needs to be met? Or is it the middle slice of 3 equally sliced segments of the US population?
The way I always thought about it is if you have to do work for a living you are not rich.
What about those of us who are one step below that?
I'm not salary yet but they're talking about promotion where I would be required as salary which means -less work but I get paid the same and if there is suddenly more work, no over time.
But it pays more over all. And would even put me in a different tax bracket. I'm not there yet. So am I like, teetering on the edge of rich?
What about the cost of living? My rent keeps going up. I can't be rich if my rent is taking most of my paycheck can I?
Bunch of people here are talking about who goes to burning man. So just to be a bit objective, here's a burning man census they've been doing for the past decade
https://blackrockcitycensus.org/
Census data does kinda prove the healthy wealth gap between attendees and the average American
So it seems like just since 2015 the amount of people making over $100,000 has literally doubled and people who are poorer having the sharpest decline in attendance. Just shy of half of attendees in 2021 where making over 6 figures and that has likely grown...
Yeah I don't care what happens to the rich people cause they will find their way out and have a ghost writer write a book for them about their experience that will be a top seller before they even release it. The world has become a playground for the rich.
That census just confirms the stereotype of the average burner being the most annoying person ever. Overwhelmingly non-religious but also overwhelmingly 'spiritual'.
The second largest political group behind democrats (~50%) are non-politicals (only double digit percentage), aka people who are disinterested in politics cause it doesn't affect them, so they don't care (let's be real cause they are overwhelmingly rich, college-educated, white, cis, and straight).
It's definitely the group easiest to judge negatively, and being stuck at burning man is likely the greatest challenge they've encountered in their life and the cherry on top is that they've paid thousands for it.
This thread is wild. I suspect most of you who seem completely positive you're right to judge thousands of people and what they deserve would be very indignant and angry if someone lumped you in with a category of people you somehow are tangentially related to.
It's kind of depressing. I thought Lemmy wasn't a wasteland of humanity like reddit was, but if I was only going by this thread I'd have to conclude it definitely is not a damned bit better than reddit.
I completely agree with you, although:
Never had any hope for that. Humanity is what it is, shitty folks are everywhere, it's statistics.
Yeah shitty people are definitely everywhere, but I've had a lot of interactions that indicate the ratio is much better here than other online communities.
This thread kinda shattered that feeling. I don't think most people being huge assholes about this know anything except that they hate rich people. Rich people? Anyone with more money than them. They don't care if you have $1000 more in your bank account or $1000000000 more than they have. Apparently anyone "rich"-er is all the same person
ngl you sound just like the redditors did after Digg went to shit. Not saying that in a judgemental way. Just noting the similar response to similar situations
I’m doing my part!
I had a nice couple of weeks here before the reddit really started to seep in.
I mean, reddit came on over here, didn't it.
Yeah. I was just hoping some of the assholes didn't come as well.
me too but here we are.
It's difficult to monetize assholery, that's exactly who reddit is chasing away...
People are children and repeat what they hear. 15 years ago, I would spout the same nonsense about burning man because of what I read on digg/Reddit from the same voices you hear now. I then met a friend who convinced me to go and I had an absolute blast.
For the vast majority of people in the US, let alone the world, attending the event is almost impossible due to cost, time, materials, etc. - it’s much easier for people that live nearby and most people within driving distance, the views of burning man will be more in line with your views - nuanced and reasonable. If you have no experience and no contact with the regular folks who attend, it’s super easy to bucket people into all these groups.
The reasoning about waste and frivolity is total bullshit — don’t tel me your bullshit vacation to Murtle Beach is anymore eco friendly. Or your plane ride to Bangkok to become more worldly is “green”. Burning man is an event, a vacation. I went many times as a student, spending only about $2000 all in. It’s a relatively economical way to have a blast for a week.
Well that’s the thing though isn’t it? Nobody’s saying their Bangkok or Myrtle Beach vacay is eco anything, nor are they vaunting some ethos, sustainability, life altering experimental way to live, Drugs, costumes, art, sex, whatever…an unattainable experience for the vast majority people.
You might see a selfie in Myrtle beach with a drink or a pic in front of Wat Pho.
If you’re gonna engage in appeals to hypocrisy, maybe you should try to find actual hypocrisy.
It's basically this IMO
People are free to do what they want. It's this self assured BS they use to justify doing drugs in the desert that the majority of the criticism comes from.
Had a close friend who became a burner. She compared her fund raising for a party to my wife's political organizing. I can't even wrap my head around how self delusional it is.
Yes, idiots exist in all contexts. If you gather enough people in one spot, a nice, countable handful will be dumb.
These are extremely generic platitudes that could apply to just about anyone.
Which morals specifically?
What's your definition of "financially responsible"? Because that's frequently a watered down way of saying "well-off" while trying to attribute it their character and not their situation.
"Upstanding member of society" is outright meaningless without context. That's an argument you hear from the defense in criminal trial.
So why are we supposed to take these hypothetical friends as evidence of anything?
Not to mention… at least for me… I don’t really think of it as a drug ridden orgy… more of an instagram hotspot.
In any case… it’s not like they can’t get people out if they really need to. Or food and supplies in. Worst case? The event people helicopter water and food and they spend a few extra days getting tench foot.
Holy crap, I just checked the actual numbers and their mortality rate is lower than the average in the population, they're doing fine
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm#:~:text=Age%2Dspecific%20rates%20increased%2010.1,44%20(248.0%20to%20287.9).
So as long as Event Organisers stay below the average mortality rate, they hold no liability? They are doing fine?
OP: One person died! It's a tragedy!
Turns out that's a better mortality rate than outside the event, not much of a tragedy, more of them would have died if they hadn't went to the event!
Outside the event includes people in their 90s dying of old age in hospitals
Generally the demographic that attends burning man skews younger which is inherently less likely to die
I included a link to the real stats which you didn't check and just with people up to their 40s the mortality rate is high enough that you would expect more people to die during that week...
Heck, let's look at the stats for 2019 so COVID isn't taken in consideration (pdf warning):
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db395-H.pdf
The important table:
Every group starting with the 25-34 y.o. has a mortality rate higher than what has been seen at Burning Man this year, 15-24 is at 49/70k/year so it's pretty much par with the current death rate at the festival, so unless all attendees are 24 or less then they're better off than the general population that didn't attend.
Strong MORALS?!?!?
Entirely ignoring who is at burning man or why, I honestly think there needs to be a line somewhere for sympathy. If you truck yourself out into the desert and things go tits up, well, shit happens. That's the risk you took.
I say this as a person who used to ride motorcycles, rock climb, and go backpacking. If shit ever went down I wouldn't have expected any sympathy. I put myself in those risky situations, and there's just plain gotta be a line for personal responsibility.
With all that being said, when such a massive group of people continuely take the same risk over and over, it's kinda funny when they finally get bit. It's the same reason COVID denires getting COVID is funny.
You’re right. Also burners want no sympathy. Self sufficiency is a core value and an expectation of all attendees. People fail at it and other burners hate them for it. No one there is asking for anyone’s sympathy.
It used to be about spirituality and the rest including hard drugs, alcohol, and social media bringing in that crowd has ruined it permanently.
A person died. This is a tragedy for an event that brings positivity into the world. Kind of annoyed.They could take all the money it costs them and bring a whole lot more positivity into the world but instead choose sex drugs and rock'n'roll in the middle of the desert. If you want to see tragedies these people could prevent just go spend some time in the poorest parts of the city you live in.
By your logic, if you're a good person but you spend your disposable income on a form of recreation that inefficiently brings positivity to the world, you deserve to be ridiculed and your suffering is justly celebrated.
Would a resort in the Virgin Islands be more respectable? Sorry their vacation doesn't look like yours.
Just pointing out that saying they bring positivity in the world is a load of BS as the resource wasted alone means their overall impact is negative to the world.
Are you bringing enough positivity to the world to deserve to be mourned of you were to die in a tragic accident? I would like to know where the line is, whose deaths are worth enough and is it only determined by what they do for fun, or does bringing positivity add to your score?
We're talking about a specific event and it's impact, talking about it bringing positivity to the world wasn't my choice, I'm just pointing out that no it's not something positive if you think about more than just the event itself.
Reminds me of the hippy drum circle episode of south park where they all get stoned and listen to jam bands and declare they are changing the world.
Maybe also because there were protesters blockading the road towards it because of climate change and festival goers were furious about it, so this is kinda ironic
More just schadenfreude, I expect, since Burning Man has long seemed dumb and idiotic to many. So something dumb and idiotic like this happening to them feels appropriate.
Yes… I guess I am used to finding places on the internet that value nuance. There is no nuance to that perception. I guess there isn’t much when it comes to burning man. Hippies are dumb, rich hippies are dumber, so bad things happening to them is hilarious.
I love poor hippies. I hate when rich people pretend to be something they’re not and expect us to play along.
I think it's like the difference between Van Lifers depicted in Close Zhao's Nomadland who work real jobs to get by, who got into it by necessity, and continue for the love of the freedom and community vs Instagram van lifers in 100K Vans, with nebulous but seemingly unlimited sources of money, whose only job seems to be influencer marketing, and selling a blatantly Disney version of Van Life to the masses.
And this dichotomy exists in so many atypical lifestyle categories. On sailing YouTube you have people go about in new and luxurious sail boats they bought outright which they learned to sail at sailing camp, vs some person in a smaller boat from the 60s, that they just figured it out how to sail, who does their own repairs the best they can and doesnt spend 2 grand a night for a marina spot and doesn't ship their boat across the atlantic and instead struggles across the passage on their own.
Maggie Mae Fish did a whole video on the same phenomenon amongst off grid influencers. One group flies in supplies by helicopter and the other built their own cabin and upgraded it with money they scrounged up from what's left over from their actual jobs.
I’ve never liked that at all.
I’m not exactly rich, but compared to some starving people in third-world countries yes I am.
I hate to think that because I have it worlds better than them by an accident of birth, I must be stupid and deserve every bad thing that happened to me. After all, I’m just an overprivileged first-worlder, therefore I purposely tried to step on everyone to get my way. Because you suffered in ways that I never have, I must suffer like that and you get to laugh at the “rich person” flailing and generally being miserable. I wasn’t born into poverty, therefore if I experience misfortune I clearly deserve it somehow. If I happen to catch cancer, well, everyone dies someday, should have gotten used to the concept of unexpectedly dying by disease like us real folk, cry harder you privileged bitch, nobody cares and nobody should. That’s just what you get for being out of touch with how real people live. Should have been prepared for that.
This is why I stick to /sub. To avoid this kind of post. And I somehow find these posts anyway (didn’t even seek out stuff outside of /sub, not sure how I landed here, going to find out how it happened so it won’t happen again) and get angry.
Lovely outrage bait. Never change, internet.
I don’t reality understand what you’re upset about but sorry my post hurt you
I think of two people in my past when I think of Burning Man.
One being my ex who got in trouble for punching his ex girlfriend AT burning man. He had to go to court and she got a restraining order against him. There were also witnesses and he almost got kicked out of school for it. He should have been kicked out of school in my opinion.
Anyway. Him and his friends were super trashy. All people who went to Burning Man.
Then there is this girl I use to work with. She was nice. She was extremely pretty. 10/10 instagram model type, not even exaggerated. She was also super late to everything. I waited two hours for her and her friend to meet up at a cafe. That was the last time we hung out. She really came off as someone who gets away with shit just because she's considered hot.
Because we live in a society devoid of empathy.
Fuck your burn!
It’s not a tragedy, it’s life on the playa. Every participant knows this. The back of the ticket states that you could die out there. Part of it is survival. Radical self reliance.
These aren’t opinions, these are facts. Radical self reliance is one of the 10 principals of burning man.
Thanks for the information
Anytime! I should also clarify, “fuck your burn” means what it sounds like, but it’s also a pretty common thing to hear at the event. That’s not because everyone’s sarcastic or everyone’s mean. It’s that everyone’s everyone and that means what it means.
I’ll say that when it rains at the event it is a magical experience. Imagine that you’ve been in the desert for days, you’re dusty as hell and tired, hot, dirty. You long for a shower or running water maybe.. and all of the sudden, you get a fine mist or a little bit of rain and you hear people start making noise and dancing in the rain.
This much water is obviously different, but there’s this sense of being in this predicament together and the community itself is built on giving, so likely others are helping where they can. In the absolute worst case scenarios, they can air lift people out of the event to a hospital in reno. I think for the most part this is just a big story for people to tell.
Also, sorry I just read that someone died at the event. Sadly this happens sometimes, for various reasons. I’ll say that during the big burn, there’s a group of volunteers who’s job it is to surround the fire, facing the crowd and physically take down anyone who runs toward the fire in an attempt to end their life.
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world YMMV. 90% of the people I’ve met who have gone to BM are jerks 🤷♂️
Hating burners is a perpetual pastime. I’ve never understood it. If you don’t want to go, don’t go. Folks form their own weird ideas about what Burning Man “means” and then bat down that straw man with misperceptions about what actually happens there. If you’ve never been: just STFU.
As a many time attendee, I’m concerned for the safety of everyone out there.
However I am also hoping that this might help lead to smaller events in the future. When I began attending, it was 12-15k people. It grew over time until it was 50k people and that really felt too big. Crazy crowds. Unsafe density of people whizzing around by night. And a greater feeling of anonymity / being able to disappear into the crowd definitely led to more irresponsible and shifty behavior by some. Once upon a time it was considered really bad behavior to just stop and piss on the ground but as the festival grew things like that became commonplace and fighting back against them was futile.
Now the festival is 70k people and I’ve stayed away for years over that. It would be great to get it under 50k again. I keep hearing about things like a full day wait during exodus and thinking maybe this will finally cause fewer people to return but it keeps not working. This probably won’t help either.
Lemmy has inherited some of the best parts of reddit... and the worst.
This place turned more negative than reddit fast
I found it funny in so far as just the other day, some of those burning man goers were blocked on the road in by climate protestors. The fact it rained and they are stuck there again, due to the climate, is pretty god damn hilarious.
These people could have checked a weather forecast and had a lot of advance warning to GTFO. If you go out to the desert without doing anything to ensure your safety, it is mostly your fault if you get screwed. Same reason it's funny when antivaxxers get measles and when COVID deniers get COVID. Of course it is still sad and the people responsible for spreading those theories should be punished, but it is sort of funny.
Remember Burning Man 2020-2022 when shit happened?
Remember Fyre festival?
How many times do people have to learn that going out into the middle of nowhere, shit is going to happen?
Because they love the smell of their own farts?
Is anyone dead?
Edit:
https://apnews.com/article/burning-man-festival-flooding-entrance-closed-d6cd88ee009c6e1f6d2d92739ec1ca18
Yes
They are investigating a possible death. You're out here making it sound like people are suffering. By all accounts, spirits remain high.
https://apnews.com/article/burning-man-festival-flooding-entrance-closed-d6cd88ee009c6e1f6d2d92739ec1ca18
I'm just appalled at these comments!
Why does it matter what the festival represents or not?
Why does it matter if you stamd for or against it?
There was a flood, people got hurt, someone even died.
And people are laughing at it?
And ridiculing it‽
Where is the respect?
We are just here to show how good and smart we are and how bad and dumb everyone else is
there is a regional burn they have every year in my state, i went for like 6 years straight in the 2010s .. my fav part was walking around nekkid lol. i also participated in the fire performance ceremony before the burn. but then they modified the rules to allow children to attend and i haven't gone since. :<
it only cost $30 and was a great fun and awesome time, as long as you took care of your MOOP!!!! (and stay hydrated!)
the big burning man festival from what i understand lost the true spirit a long ass time ago.
Interesting. What is moop?
I love these posts. Yes everyone on the internet has a short, pithy take. Yes it looks cool to have no empathy.
Obviously everyone has their reasons, but why are we shocked that someone somewhere said something online that seems heartless or at odds with our version of the world?
And then when everyone explains that the event has a stereotype and there is a reason for that stereotype, and OP explains that, well, plenty of nice people participate in that activity, why would strangers on the internet shit on the nice ones too? And it's like, yeah, this is what the internet does. Things get 2-dimensional.
🙄
That’s about right and I think we should do better.
The internet could use more empathy, I suppose. Part of navigating it, unfortunately, it understanding that shortcoming.
Theres a book/movie that explains this pretty well...It's called "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Online most people are like the Grinch and they believe others are silly/stupid/wrong or immoral for doing fun things. Seeing them suffer instinctively sounds good.
They are likely to be super surprised when the burners return and talk about how it changed their life...After all the best burns are when shit goes sideways.
Because they’ve never been.