Been twice to burning man. It’s hard to describe the corruption of the soul that exists at burning man.
There’s a focus on the environment yet everything is disposable and people travel from all over the world to go.
There’s talk of safety but then they will literally kick you out of camp as soon as someone says you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did. YES, it did literally happen to someone I know. It felt like a public lynching.
It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
It’s a celebration in mediocrity. Most things that happen are very mediocre at best. They just do it because you’re supposed to give something, so they give something mediocre.
The people are all hyper liberal, and the types that cannot help but judge individuals based on whether they’re in their group on not. People you called your friends for years will turn against you once the group turns on you.
Obviously most of it is all about seeing and being seen, engaging in the pleasures of sensual experiences on offer.
I would describe it as literally sodom on earth. It’s shaped like a butthole, and takes a massive shit once a year.
The best thing about it imo is the cycling around where you can mostly just get away from the degeneracy that exists. The temple is quite nice too.
From everything i've seen it seems to have the opposite tone and ethos as biblical sodom & gomorrah—it's oriented around welcoming strangers and not abusing them. Even being kicked out would be preferable.
It is a 60000 people festival where OP came with friends he knows for years (by own words).
It says something about OP and his friends, but it is unclear who was actually in the wrong. We have no idea whether the "other" people were in the wrong or someone actually crossed lines and "others" reacted reasonably. Because people who, for example, abuse or mistreat others see themselves as victims when it is not enabled.
But, what is sure is that if your friends turn on you during short crowded festival, the issue is in your group dynamic. And way OP uses language suggest the kind of personality that will blame strategically rather then fairly
You forgot the 100F day, 40F night, multi-day-long white-out dust storms and 75mph winds, dirt floor that turns to wet concrete if it rains and is so acidic it'll give your feet a chemical burn.
But yeah, the burn is hell on relationships. If you go with a significant other there's a big chance you'll break up by the end. On the other hand you might go home with someone new...
> I would describe it as literally sodom on earth.
This would be extremely disturbing given the extreme extent to which people rely on the hospitality of others, as I understand it. I hope you mean it in a sense of indulgent degeneracy rather than in the biblical sense.
> It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
Based on the org and event's own stated goals, and the reality of what most of the participants get out of it, it's not just about "camping together", it's at least in part about building a temporary city focused around art, expression, and a set of shared principles.
anyway, to the rest of your comment, Burning Man absolutely is a mixed bag, as any dense place with ~65,000 will be, and it sure isn't a place for everyone, but decrying it as "corruption of the soul" and "sodom on earth", seems quite extreme imho
> you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did
It might help the discussion to say what that "normal thing" is. Is it truly a normal innocuous thing that is fine to repeat here, or was it say, using slurs or acting in an anti-social, cruel way? the rest of your comment, as well as my lived experience, really makes me believe it was something more akin to the second, even if you don't actively view it that way. I'm happy to be wrong, but maybe reflect on how your vagueness and framing primes that sort of reading?
It’s quite difficult to comment on someone’s camp turning on them with no context. Badly run camps exist and badly behaved people exist too. You can’t expect the org (or a higher power) to police this.
I’ve worked gate for years, so I’ve seen plenty of RVs and camper trailers from the inside, and you do get an impression of the people that travel in them. Everyone’s there - be it tie die and patchouli hippies, be it hunting gear and MRE preppers, college party kids or mom and pop coming because it was on some travel destination list.
Camp with hippies, and you’ll be at a hippie festival. Camp with ravers, you’ll be at a rave. You can camp with a church group there, with philosophers (we had them as neighbors one year), with families with small kids, or with (disarmed) 2A gun nuts.
> The people are all hyper liberal, and the types that cannot help but judge individuals based on whether they’re in their group on not.
I agree that is a trait of the hyper liberal, but it belongs to hyper conservative people too. Also, given your feelings, why did you go a second time?
The most surprising thing is that you went back a second time after getting kicked out of camp and turned against by all of your friends.
I’ve known a couple of people who were turned against by their friends much to their surprise, and in their case was definitely the liberal mind virus and not their own behavior too.
I would never guessed someone would look at these kind of events and thought that they would be frequented by different people (like conservatives). When I went to Christian retreats, I knew that most people there would be hardcore conservatives
> the camp’s liberal mind virus spread like wildfire thereafter.
I guess I'm still just confused about this. Can you connect the dots between liberal values and how this situation played out?
in general: "liberal mind virus" is imho, a useless phrase at best, and an actively conversation-deteriorating one generally. Other people _do_ have legitimately held belief systems and assumptions that don't match yours, and arrive at them through a complex chain of events. It feels to me as if you are acting out the same derision you claim "hyper-liberals" show to their perceived outgroup by dismissing it as a "mind virus", removing them from the category of "normal person" so your assumption can hold
Eventually, because this guy felt unsafe multiple members of the rest of the camp put their hands up as feeling unsafe. I call it liberal mind virus because of the “safety” focus. A normal person would see small challenges and discomforts as part and parcel of daily life, and they certainly wouldn’t have safety concerns as grown up (mostly) men from a small girl. Everything was also taken out of context too - they all knew her and had camped together for 10+ years. It was basically a group-think public lynching based on some false sense of morality.
> they certainly wouldn’t have safety concerns as grown up (mostly) men from a small girl
Why? I can see the idea of “he can (probably) overpower her”, but is that the only valid metric for safety? I think a lot of reasonable people would say no. What you actually do about that is perhaps more up in the air - sometimes it is saying “you just gotta deal with it”, like you said, but that is a lot worse of an answer when it comes to personal dynamics and consent
> I call it liberal mind virus because of the “safety” focus
> … group-think public lynching based on some false sense of morality
I also promise you these are not exclusive or exceptional traits among liberals. It’s extremely easy for me to frame the (imho unreasonable) actions of some conservatives I know with that exact same language - do they have a “mind virus”? I think it’s important to take them seriously rather than dismiss them like that, as tempting as it might be
By all means I don’t know the situation and don’t want to interrogate you, but please reflect on: is it really the fault of hyper-liberal partisan groupthink, or was it a case of humans being messy and messily using the language they have to paper over it, or was it a case where “normal” people across the spectrum might agree upon a little reflection even if you still think it’s wrong?
I think you might receive less blowback and better conversation by avoiding vague, incendiary, hyper-partisan language
> I would describe it as literally sodom on earth.
1. You should go to Ozora festival in hungary. Then you will experience true hedonism.
2. Most of what you describe can be broken into normal human group behaviour, and american legal warfare at work.
Burn style festival are really cool and fun. But it really is about what you bring to it. Some people want a place where they can be the worst versions of themselves around strangers where it won't follow them home. Others truely want to create something cool.
It really sounds like you don't have the right attitude for these kind of festivals, and should stick to commercial "edm" festivals.
It sounds like there was a personality conflict or something in the specific camp you went with? Some of the issues you describe are totally foreign to my experience and don’t seem descriptions of the event as a whole.
The only lawyer language I can remember was the warning on the ticket that I might die. I don’t think I ever encountered any contracts or similar.
> There’s a focus on the environment yet everything is disposable and people travel from all over the world to go.
There's a focus on LNT, not vague environmentalism. It is not materially worse than flying to another country in terms of environmental impact.
> There’s talk of safety but then they will literally kick you out of camp as soon as someone says you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did. YES, it did literally happen to someone I know. It felt like a public lynching.
Oh boy, I can only imagine what sort of personality you are to have gone through this. I've seen this archetype before.
That said: Burning Man is a platform/blank slate that people bring things to. There are many camps with different ethos. Personally, I think the best way to burn is to get a group of friends and do a thing together.
Just dropping into a camp of people you don't know is bound to have the potential for complicated interpersonal dynamics, particularly in one of the harsher environments on the planet. Everything there is more difficult, and that extends to relationships.
> It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
This is a choice. If you're part of a 200+ person theme camp, yes, you're opting into some bureaucracy needed to make sure the requisite cats get herded and the mission of that camp happens. Grab three friends to do your own thing and you can live blissfully paperwork free, if you so choose. Camps are not a one-size-fits-all model.
This is like joining a FAANG and then complaining about layers of management. Don't like it? Startups are callin'. Or even something in-between.
> It’s a celebration in mediocrity. Most things that happen are very mediocre at best. They just do it because you’re supposed to give something, so they give something mediocre.
Doing literally anything in that environment is hard, so mediocrity is sort of par for the course. That said, the best hot dog I've ever had was in many ways the shittiest hot dog. But it appeared out in deep playa when I was tired and starving and far from camp, and felt like a small miracle. It teaches you to appreciate the simple things and the kindness of strangers, if you let it.
> Obviously most of it is all about seeing and being seen, engaging in the pleasures of sensual experiences on offer.
I'm not sure how you managed to make it out there twice and come away thinking that this is the point. I feel like if you spent fifteen minutes reading about the burn, you'd immediately dispel yourself of this.
> The best thing about it imo is the cycling around where you can mostly just get away from the degeneracy that exists.
Reading between the lines at your conservatism, I can't really help but wonder what you thought you were going to get out of a counter-culture event that emphasizes freedom of expression. You didn't think us queerdos were going to be up in that shit makin' you uncomfortable, or telling you not to creep on your campmates? And then you did it TWICE? Big oofs.
It's worth noting that LNT is also a requirement of the space (a BLM wilderness area) and their permit. I've been involved in organising rocket launches at the same site (well slightly north) and we are required to do the same thing - the BLM inspects our site (and Burning Man's) afterwards, it's a condition of our ongoing permit.
When I first started going out there (before Burning Man) there was a century's worth of junk out there, we spent a lot of time helping the BLM clean it up - well most of it, there are millenia old archeology sites there and 200 year old covered wagon debris which are protected, but the tires, car wrecks, all sorts of junk had to go - we appreciate people putting in the work to keep it clean
I find it to be a microcosm of life and human nature.
Turns out it is is entirely about people, including them at their best and worst.
You can focus your attention on the good or the bad, or ignore both and build something.
With humans at play, you are bound to get sensual experiences, because that is what many people enjoy. You also have people who do epic amounts of work and engineering, because that is also what many people enjoy.
Cant really speak to your experiences with social strife. My burning man camp became my family back in the real world. Some of the smartest and most exceptional people I have ever met. Conservative goat ranchers to bay area they/them environmentalists going out of their way to be kind and give 110%.
I just got a bunch of painstakingly hand made quilts to celebrate the birth of my 2 month old in the mail from a campmate I haven't seen in 3 years.
m101 · · focus · HN ↗
There’s a focus on the environment yet everything is disposable and people travel from all over the world to go.
There’s talk of safety but then they will literally kick you out of camp as soon as someone says you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did. YES, it did literally happen to someone I know. It felt like a public lynching.
It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
It’s a celebration in mediocrity. Most things that happen are very mediocre at best. They just do it because you’re supposed to give something, so they give something mediocre.
The people are all hyper liberal, and the types that cannot help but judge individuals based on whether they’re in their group on not. People you called your friends for years will turn against you once the group turns on you.
Obviously most of it is all about seeing and being seen, engaging in the pleasures of sensual experiences on offer.
I would describe it as literally sodom on earth. It’s shaped like a butthole, and takes a massive shit once a year.
The best thing about it imo is the cycling around where you can mostly just get away from the degeneracy that exists. The temple is quite nice too.
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
That is somehow a fault of a week long festival?
ryan_glass · · focus · HN ↗
Arainach · · focus · HN ↗
If the festival AND your friends turn against you, maybe you were being a dick and you're not telling us the whole story.
alexgoodhart · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
watwut · · focus · HN ↗
It says something about OP and his friends, but it is unclear who was actually in the wrong. We have no idea whether the "other" people were in the wrong or someone actually crossed lines and "others" reacted reasonably. Because people who, for example, abuse or mistreat others see themselves as victims when it is not enabled.
But, what is sure is that if your friends turn on you during short crowded festival, the issue is in your group dynamic. And way OP uses language suggest the kind of personality that will blame strategically rather then fairly
swerner · · focus · HN ↗
0xbadcafebee · · focus · HN ↗
But yeah, the burn is hell on relationships. If you go with a significant other there's a big chance you'll break up by the end. On the other hand you might go home with someone new...
off_with_their_ · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
This would be extremely disturbing given the extreme extent to which people rely on the hospitality of others, as I understand it. I hope you mean it in a sense of indulgent degeneracy rather than in the biblical sense.
e_outofme · · focus · HN ↗
Based on the org and event's own stated goals, and the reality of what most of the participants get out of it, it's not just about "camping together", it's at least in part about building a temporary city focused around art, expression, and a set of shared principles.
anyway, to the rest of your comment, Burning Man absolutely is a mixed bag, as any dense place with ~65,000 will be, and it sure isn't a place for everyone, but decrying it as "corruption of the soul" and "sodom on earth", seems quite extreme imho
> you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did
It might help the discussion to say what that "normal thing" is. Is it truly a normal innocuous thing that is fine to repeat here, or was it say, using slurs or acting in an anti-social, cruel way? the rest of your comment, as well as my lived experience, really makes me believe it was something more akin to the second, even if you don't actively view it that way. I'm happy to be wrong, but maybe reflect on how your vagueness and framing primes that sort of reading?
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
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isatty · · focus · HN ↗
2c2c2c · · focus · HN ↗
m101 · · focus · HN ↗
cammikebrown · · focus · HN ↗
donkers · · focus · HN ↗
swerner · · focus · HN ↗
Camp with hippies, and you’ll be at a hippie festival. Camp with ravers, you’ll be at a rave. You can camp with a church group there, with philosophers (we had them as neighbors one year), with families with small kids, or with (disarmed) 2A gun nuts.
throwup238 · · focus · HN ↗
And you went twice?
LastTrain · · focus · HN ↗
I agree that is a trait of the hyper liberal, but it belongs to hyper conservative people too. Also, given your feelings, why did you go a second time?
phoghed · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve known a couple of people who were turned against by their friends much to their surprise, and in their case was definitely the liberal mind virus and not their own behavior too.
mc32 · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
jl6 · · focus · HN ↗
Simpsons called it 30 years ago.
tuesdaynight · · focus · HN ↗
I would never guessed someone would look at these kind of events and thought that they would be frequented by different people (like conservatives). When I went to Christian retreats, I knew that most people there would be hardcore conservatives
ceejayoz · · focus · HN ↗
> like a public lynching
> all hyper liberal... the types that cannot help but judge individuals based on whether they’re in their group on not
I'm starting to wonder what "some normal thing you did" entailed.
m101 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
e_outofme · · focus · HN ↗
I guess I'm still just confused about this. Can you connect the dots between liberal values and how this situation played out?
in general: "liberal mind virus" is imho, a useless phrase at best, and an actively conversation-deteriorating one generally. Other people _do_ have legitimately held belief systems and assumptions that don't match yours, and arrive at them through a complex chain of events. It feels to me as if you are acting out the same derision you claim "hyper-liberals" show to their perceived outgroup by dismissing it as a "mind virus", removing them from the category of "normal person" so your assumption can hold
m101 · · focus · HN ↗
ceejayoz · · focus · HN ↗
You’ve essentially described the ending of every Survivor episode.
> they certainly wouldn’t have safety concerns as grown up (mostly) men from a small girl
I take it you’ve never had to contain a raging toddler.
e_outofme · · focus · HN ↗
Why? I can see the idea of “he can (probably) overpower her”, but is that the only valid metric for safety? I think a lot of reasonable people would say no. What you actually do about that is perhaps more up in the air - sometimes it is saying “you just gotta deal with it”, like you said, but that is a lot worse of an answer when it comes to personal dynamics and consent
> I call it liberal mind virus because of the “safety” focus > … group-think public lynching based on some false sense of morality
I also promise you these are not exclusive or exceptional traits among liberals. It’s extremely easy for me to frame the (imho unreasonable) actions of some conservatives I know with that exact same language - do they have a “mind virus”? I think it’s important to take them seriously rather than dismiss them like that, as tempting as it might be
By all means I don’t know the situation and don’t want to interrogate you, but please reflect on: is it really the fault of hyper-liberal partisan groupthink, or was it a case of humans being messy and messily using the language they have to paper over it, or was it a case where “normal” people across the spectrum might agree upon a little reflection even if you still think it’s wrong?
I think you might receive less blowback and better conversation by avoiding vague, incendiary, hyper-partisan language
i80and · · focus · HN ↗
BunsanSpace · · focus · HN ↗
1. You should go to Ozora festival in hungary. Then you will experience true hedonism. 2. Most of what you describe can be broken into normal human group behaviour, and american legal warfare at work.
Burn style festival are really cool and fun. But it really is about what you bring to it. Some people want a place where they can be the worst versions of themselves around strangers where it won't follow them home. Others truely want to create something cool.
It really sounds like you don't have the right attitude for these kind of festivals, and should stick to commercial "edm" festivals.
ashdksnndck · · focus · HN ↗
The only lawyer language I can remember was the warning on the ticket that I might die. I don’t think I ever encountered any contracts or similar.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
supern0va · · focus · HN ↗
There's a focus on LNT, not vague environmentalism. It is not materially worse than flying to another country in terms of environmental impact.
> There’s talk of safety but then they will literally kick you out of camp as soon as someone says you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did. YES, it did literally happen to someone I know. It felt like a public lynching.
Oh boy, I can only imagine what sort of personality you are to have gone through this. I've seen this archetype before.
That said: Burning Man is a platform/blank slate that people bring things to. There are many camps with different ethos. Personally, I think the best way to burn is to get a group of friends and do a thing together.
Just dropping into a camp of people you don't know is bound to have the potential for complicated interpersonal dynamics, particularly in one of the harsher environments on the planet. Everything there is more difficult, and that extends to relationships.
> It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
This is a choice. If you're part of a 200+ person theme camp, yes, you're opting into some bureaucracy needed to make sure the requisite cats get herded and the mission of that camp happens. Grab three friends to do your own thing and you can live blissfully paperwork free, if you so choose. Camps are not a one-size-fits-all model.
This is like joining a FAANG and then complaining about layers of management. Don't like it? Startups are callin'. Or even something in-between.
> It’s a celebration in mediocrity. Most things that happen are very mediocre at best. They just do it because you’re supposed to give something, so they give something mediocre.
Doing literally anything in that environment is hard, so mediocrity is sort of par for the course. That said, the best hot dog I've ever had was in many ways the shittiest hot dog. But it appeared out in deep playa when I was tired and starving and far from camp, and felt like a small miracle. It teaches you to appreciate the simple things and the kindness of strangers, if you let it.
> Obviously most of it is all about seeing and being seen, engaging in the pleasures of sensual experiences on offer.
I'm not sure how you managed to make it out there twice and come away thinking that this is the point. I feel like if you spent fifteen minutes reading about the burn, you'd immediately dispel yourself of this.
> The best thing about it imo is the cycling around where you can mostly just get away from the degeneracy that exists.
Reading between the lines at your conservatism, I can't really help but wonder what you thought you were going to get out of a counter-culture event that emphasizes freedom of expression. You didn't think us queerdos were going to be up in that shit makin' you uncomfortable, or telling you not to creep on your campmates? And then you did it TWICE? Big oofs.
Taniwha · · focus · HN ↗
When I first started going out there (before Burning Man) there was a century's worth of junk out there, we spent a lot of time helping the BLM clean it up - well most of it, there are millenia old archeology sites there and 200 year old covered wagon debris which are protected, but the tires, car wrecks, all sorts of junk had to go - we appreciate people putting in the work to keep it clean
s1artibartfast · · focus · HN ↗
With humans at play, you are bound to get sensual experiences, because that is what many people enjoy. You also have people who do epic amounts of work and engineering, because that is also what many people enjoy.
Cant really speak to your experiences with social strife. My burning man camp became my family back in the real world. Some of the smartest and most exceptional people I have ever met. Conservative goat ranchers to bay area they/them environmentalists going out of their way to be kind and give 110%.
I just got a bunch of painstakingly hand made quilts to celebrate the birth of my 2 month old in the mail from a campmate I haven't seen in 3 years.