Post
by Ano » Thu Sep 04, 2014 11:55 am
I hated Plug n Plays until I actually engaged with one, and the members of one.
Now I get it.
It doesn't matter what amenities you return home to at the end of the evening. RV, tent, cot underneath a truck, whatever. In the end, we're all dust colored out on the open playa. In the end, we all have to piss inside a bottle or a porto-potty when out in the open playa. In the end, the person standing next to you in line for Ice could be a millionaire, or they could be Will Smith, or they could be a Receptionist. Worrying about an RV fortress that someone goes home to is a waste of energy and time. It doesn't matter. First Camp has a fucking fence around it, and nobody is complaining about that. Those PnP camps that are RV fortresses? Walk over to one. Say hello. I know the Strawman is that they'll tell you to fuck off, but my experience drinking Long Island's and shitting with running water says differently.
After all, some of the most PnP experiences on Playa can be had at Staff camps, first camp, or even within your own camp. Our camp had an RV with a freezer and Ice-maker that we used all week. Are we plugging and playing for napping in that sucker when it was 120 degrees out, or when we used the ice maker? I was able to eat at the commissary, three times a day, for a week. I didn't have to bring out any food, whatsoever, and on top of that, I received fresh food delivered from Reno to eat in that building. All I had to do for that was "volunteer," and honestly, my "volunteer" time is some of the most fun I have on Playa, so I don't even consider it work. The group I volunteer for has one of the most exclusive bars on the Playa, we straight up harass people out of it if they aren't even loosely associated with us. PnP bars are WAY more open than ours.
Stop worrying about rich people. Guess what? They are going to sleep in Tour Busses with air conditioning and hot meals cooked for them. They'll have workers helping them out. And there's no amount of words on the internet that will change that. However, these same rich people will then ride their segways or tricycles or whatever out on to the playa, and have the same burning man experiences that fundamentally change you, and then they'll bring them home to their friends, who will then come to Burning Man, and repeat. They'll still get dusty. They'll still get lost in the dust storm and have a hard time finding their way home. They'll shit in the same deep playa porto potties you shit in while lost on acid at four in the morning looking for the city. They'll pick up the same MOOP. And, hell, they might even visit the same camp you do or engage in some art. They might even be visiting your camp and talking with you about their favorite colors! WHAT?! OH GOD!
If anything, we should see these walled fortresses as success. Burning Man is so wildly fucking succesful that it attracts the rich and famous and political, like Grover Norquist, out to see what the fuck this desert city is. And then, these rich and famous and political people take the weird shit they experience, translate it for the default, and bring it home.
Fuck you if you think Burning Man is only authentic if you shit in your hand and sleep in the dust. Fuck that, I'm bringing an RV or trailer next year, and it only took me four years to admit that I was an idiot for thinking that what you slept in created your entire experience. After having a big wide open camp last year, we walled off parts of our camp this year so we could have some private space. Almost every theme camp I know of does this. Is it any better if it's a wall of carports instead of a wall of RVs?
Fun fact, directly from a guy who runs one of the longest and largest PnP camps on Playa: Most PnP campers are first or second year Burners, who then go on to fund and build their own camps and art. Plain and simple fact. There was not a single person in his camp who had been more than two years, and he had yet to hear of someone dropping out and never returning after year two. Many of his campers have gone on to help build some of the biggest and best camps that we see on the big streets. Some of them have even moved on to volunteering within the Org fulltime under one of their umbrellas (DMV, ESD, DPW, etc). Are they any less of a burner because they started there? What about the virgin friend you bring one year and do everything for? Is there really that big of a difference between your virgin friend you help bring to the dust and the tons of virgins he helps bring to the dust and acculturate?
And who really gets to dictate who the best use of a ticket is? If someone gets a ticket, they get a ticket. Simple as that. If you didn't get one, you didn't get one. Fight for your ticket if you really want to go. I volunteer 50+ hours a week so that I can guarantee mine. Some folks build art. Others build camps. If your entire playa experience is based around doing whatever you feel like and then complaining about it on the Internet afterwards because people didn't burn how you wanted them to, perhaps you should reconsider your ticket-acquiring-strategies.
If anything, I take it as a remarkable success that there are rich and famous people flying out to see the party we put on. That's fucking awesome. I don't pretend to be offended and upset because the guy next to me at Robot Heart during the sunrise is a multi-millionaire. I've realized that it's a waste of time to care.
