"Burning Man's Culture is in Danger"

[Rice]

{snip}
Selling more tickets would help at first, but the math would catch up. The more tickets sold, the more new burners created, the higher the demand is next year. It can be frustrating, but it is what it is. Burning Man is a victim of it's own success.

WileE13 - The number of tickets that can be sold is directly related to the limits put on the event by the BLM. There is a permit issued which dictates the maximum number of people that can be at BM at one time.

GENERAL
I. The maximum authorized population (also referred to as the "population cap") at any point in time
during the 2016 event is 70,000 paid participants. The population cap does not include volunteers,
government personnel, emergency service providers, vendors, and contractors. Black Rock City LLC
("BRC") is required to keep the maximum population of the event from exceeding this population cap.
Consequences to BRC for exceeding the population cap may include, but are not limited to, a finding of
non-compliance; suspension or cancellation of this permit per 43 C.F.R. § 2932.56; a monetary or other
penalty per 43 C.F.R. § 2932.57; denial of subsequent application(s) fora SRP per43 C.F.R. § 2932.26;
and/or imposition of additional terms and conditions in subsequent years' permits (if granted) that are
designed to keep the event population within the maximum authorized population, consistent with 43
C.F .R. §§ 2932.26 and 2932.41. The Bureau of Land Management ("BLM") reserves the right to assess
additional cost recovery for any costs the BLM incurs as a result of any population exceedances, per 43
C.F.R. § 2932.31.

The above is from the August 2, 2016 the Bureau of Land Management issued one-year permit for the Burning Man event. https://z9hbb3mwou383x1930ve0ugl-wpengi ... 2-2016.pdf

Before the event sold out, there was never a concern about getting a ticket. That all changed it 2011.

The ticket selling process since then has been what we will politely call contentious. The problem is quite simple, more people than tickets. NO system will ever be seen by everyone as fair when this is the case.

I have no good ideas on how to improve the ticket availability situation. Perhaps is Burning Man was harder it would help.

[some seeing eye]

I think the man has stated that there are more than 2x the number of people competing for tickets than available. Lifting the population cap by 5-10K per year is not going to solve that any time soon. Especially with the hype about what a great festival it is.

[gbus]

Any culture needs to have a larger basis of indoctrinated people than newbies. If two companies merge then there is often problems with organisational culture because the foundations are not strong enough for the wave of people coming in. I have only been burning since 2015, but in my limited experience it is pretty clear that the event is bringing in too many people for the culture to be effective.

I wrote this a while back on another thread regarding ticketing:

2015 was my first year, so I am not really in the position to judge. I did, however, have a fairly different experience to what people have been saying. I didn't experience any lad-ish behaviour. It felt exactly like I imagined Burning Man to feel like, my experience was that people were following the principles and seemed respectful.

I was surprised by the ticketing and I fully agree with the OP. Coming from the UK and being a big football (soccer) fan, I was a bit confused at how things worked. I will try to outline the system my club uses and apply it to Burning Man

The club controls all ticketing and each person that buys a ticket is registered. This is very important for 'away' games when the club is travelling to another stadium. The amount of these away games you go to is tallied up and you are put in a category, eg. if you have been to all the away games, you are in the top category. What this means is that when a glamour game comes around that everyone wants to go to, people in the top category are offered tickets first. Each ticket has the person's name on it in a bid to combat the black market. My assumption before coming to Burning Man was that the ticketing would work in a similar way.

My proposal would be that, as the OP says, names are printed on tickets and attendance is registered. Once a burner has been 5 years they are put in a top category. When it comes ticket sales time, the members of the top category are offered access to one ticket each. (obviously this would depend on numbers and I would like to see a third or quarter of the total tickets being reserved for people under 5 years)

I imagine people would want to play around with the details of this, but i think the sentiment behind it is a good one


The only reason the culture is in danger is because the event is not controlling who is coming in. If you want a culture to remain then new people need to be filtered in slowly. It's impossible to have the level of new people and maintain a strong culture. I don't imagine I am saying anything new here.

[FlyingMonkey]

While we are on the topic, how about giving a certain number of tickets to the regional groups to divvy up among members that have been vetted as (at least somewhat) embracing the principals.

Yes! Let's give the tickets to super exclusive groups.

Are you saying that in general the regional reps/orgs are exclusive groups? I haven't found that to be the case & in fact I have found the complete opposite in my regional. They do a superb job of attracting new people & immersing them in the "culture". I know of several 2nd year Burners that have camped with the regional group, made art, been introduced to the principals & mentored in the Burner ways. Do you remember the show "Kung Fu"? We have many young Grasshoppers that contribute to the village in their own way & they are offered DGS tickets if they fail in the main sale. Those are who I want to have better odds of getting tickets for future burns. Not ravers who through dumb luck get a ticket & trash the place.



What would your solution be for a ticket distribution that would help ensure SOME tickets are sourced to people that actually support the Burning Man culture & participate? A Dumb luck lottery hasn't preserved Burning Man. It will be just another festival very soon if we don't do something.

Maybe I have been very lucky & that most regional reps are asshats. I hope not & I suspect they are not. YMMV.

[Simon of the Playa]

in 1996 it was dangerous and on the edge.

in 2006 it was eclectic and electric.

in 2016 paris hilton sat on my friends lap.


it's time to go full circle and get scary.


really scary...

[gbus]

2026 Paris Hilton is dangerous and on the edge of my lap

[FlyingMonkey]

2026 Paris Hilton is dangerous and on the edge of my lap

Who's Paris Hilton?

[EGAZ]

I'm game for scary.... Hard & scary....

[Ratty]

gbus, I see a great cottage industry emerging in the form of fake IDs.

[gbus]

gbus, I see a great cottage industry emerging in the form of fake IDs.

Exactly why I just ordered a laminator

[Corvus]

I'm not as dusty as some of the posters in this thread, but every year since I was first to TTITD in 2009, it's been about 40% virgins. Somehow we've managed to survive and thrive this annual influx of the clueless. Now, since we went "mainstream culture" in 2012 this might have become more difficult, what with a larger influx of bucket-listers, but we have taken steps to show them what we are about.

• In 1990 Burning Man was kicked off of Baker Beach
  In 1996 Burning Man discovered 8,000 people cannot be on the playa in complete anarchy
  In 2007 Burning Man lost our effigy early, leading to arrests, convictions, and acrimony
  In 2011 Burning Man ran out of the capacity to include all who wanted to come

In each case the event changed, survived, and thrived. Sometimes the changes were not to the liking of those who were there before (John Law, anyone?) but we are still here.

[Elorrum]

I think density density density and managing the mess is the only intention. Sell more tickets until it breaks. Fly 'em in, bus 'em in, get those theme camps good and big and well organized, keep that big art going out on the playa. Sound camps, more sound camps! Big money! If it's raining money, of course they'd want big buckets put close together. The hard sell, since it's not the tickets, is to get so many people to volunteer and staff the thing, wait, oh yeah, the principles. It's a business. I'm pretty sure it hit my personal tipping point with the price and the difficulty to just be one person with one vehicle.

[WileE13]

Maybe it is time for Burning Man to be bi-annual. Do one in the spring and call it Muddy Man.

[Simon of the Playa]

http://www.konbini.com/us/inspiration/c ... rning-man/

[wraith]

Any culture needs to have a larger basis of indoctrinated people than newbies. If two companies merge then there is often problems with organisational culture because the foundations are not strong enough for the wave of people coming in. I have only been burning since 2015, but in my limited experience it is pretty clear that the event is bringing in too many people for the culture to be effective.

It's not rocket science. It's just the Eternal September problem writ large. A group with a culture can only indoctrinate so many people at a time, because it takes time and effort to do so. Once the flood of new members reaches a tipping point, the culture will break down because it cannot be transmitted quickly enough to remain whole.

[Simon of the Playa]

"i have posted the enemy and he is Us."

pogobot 2.0


https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article ... tatesofart

[The Rod]

You think if we made hipster movie set at Burning Man and premiered it at a hipster film festival in Barcelona it would attract the "right kind" of people to the event?

How about if we made the movie artsy by making it a loose retelling of some Greek fable. Would that attract the "right kind" of people?

[sparklerice]

At the beginning of the thread, and I'm sure others have thought it - people were dwelling on the fact that it is "too late" for burning man to change it's culture.

And I'd like to challenge back one thought - Is it too late for America to change it's culture? Is it too late to change the culture of our immediate community? Of our loved ones?

It's something I've been challenging myself daily with; I'm normally the quiet bystander, somebody who waits to until the "appropriate" time to stand up for my beliefs. But, recently I've learned to embrace immediacy and the "power of now". Why wait to stand up for my beliefs, for other people, for the world? I don't always receive a positive response in return- but I do feel I've initiated post-dated change in thought.... The seed is planted. The conversation will be easier the next time around.

Change and challenge is part of what Burning Man stands for... A lot of the "problems" started innocently but now have grown "out of control"... Especially with the PnP camps. Though playing devil's advocate - you could say that is radical self reliance... They have the money for it, why not spend it? Except then you see the feathers, and the sequins, the moop, the exclusion, the commodification of the uneducated. The only way to change things is through communal effort. Through commitment of our community. Through education and acceptance.

I think the same issues BMORG is challenged with very much parallel the ones we are challenged with in our every day communities.
But - I am hopeful, and I'm excited to see what we can come together to create.

[Simon of the Playa]

[some seeing eye]

From the mouth of "the man:" https://burningman.org/event/camps/turnkey-camping/.

Personally I'm more worried about unprepared virgins from the festival world. A lot of our discussion is about ticket schemes that benefit the person proposing them. Another big chunk of discussion is wealthy people - I think they are trainable and their numbers are small. But I think we need a continuous effort for them to work on anonymity, losing the ostentation and getting with the culture.

[Elorrum]

One thousand admission tickets tied to bus tickets.

[some seeing eye]

Tickets with water-n-play!

[Simon of the Playa]

what did you think of the dragonfly swarm last year?

nice little touch, huh.

i'm thinking mormon crickets this year.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/insect-attac ... 42044.html

[Simon of the Playa]

1502578518117.jpeg

[1durphul]

If the Burning Man org really wanted to change things, they'd put a blanket ban on media at the event. Every gee-wiz article, or commercial magazine/website pictorial essay, every interview by the members of the BORG brings hundreds more people to the event. Don't we already have enough? Larry, et al. want to give interviews during the event so that it helps strengthen the culture? Give those interviews exclusively to the radio stations and newspapers that are on the playa.

Then there are the large scale dance camps. My first burn was 2004, and those camps were already pretty large, but they seemed at least manageable. ( One of my happiest memories is dancing at Sol System with it's giant modern stone henge of 360 surround sound speakers, leading out to the 2004 version of the sonic/solar runway. Which pointed to Alien Semaphore. You could still see the art form the dance area. You were still in BRC. )

Now they just seem wildly out of proportion with the size of the city they are on the edge of. These camps don't enhance the city, they loom over it like some thing that isn't part of the city itself, a cancerous tumor. The backsides of these camps are dead, dark and uninviting, often with fencing or RV walls on the inner rings of the city. I wonder why the BORG doesn't make it official and place them outside the city completely. (Or better yet, kindly suggest to they throw their own event.)

[Token]

I wonder why the BORG doesn't make it official and place them outside the city completely. (Or better yet, kindly suggest to they throw their own event.)

Because they were on the playa since the original Zone Trip.

There was also a time when the rave was two miles out in open playa, far away from the effigy, but that was decades ago and the time machine is all broken.

[FlyingMonkey]

1502578518117.jpeg

Not even Moop Nazi's?

What about feather Nazi's?

[Corvus]

There was also a time when the rave was two miles out in open playa, far away from the effigy, but that was decades ago and the time machine is all broken.

IIRC, the two injuries at the 1996 burn that helped prompt the BLM's stern gaze and the move off-playa in 1997 were caused by somebody speeding across the playa to the rave area.

Other than the first burn/zone trip in 1990 with 80 people present, every burn has had a dance component -- the grumbling between the Artists and the Dancers has been eternal. Like it or not, EDM camps are an integral part of the BRC experience for some people, and I say this with no fondness for them on my part.

[1durphul]

Other than the first burn/zone trip in 1990 with 80 people present, every burn has had a dance component -- the grumbling between the Artists and the Dancers has been eternal. Like it or not, EDM camps are an integral part of the BRC experience for some people, and I say this with no fondness for them on my part.

I like EDM quite a bit, my real issue is the size of the dance camp footprint.

Something else I've noticed over the 12 years of attendance is that the Esplanade is getting fuzzy. It's hard to tell where it ends, and where the play begins, both at the 10 and 2 ends, and inside the ring itself.

[Traveller in Time]

Radical inclusion in the extreme would be to tolerate anything.
The minimum to be tolerated will be a level of integrity closely followed by law.
A society can not sustain tolerating anyhting, a society has to exclude the intolerable.

The group (that does not exist until it is too late) of Spectators/Festival dancers/Turnkey clients will for their behaviour toward others mimic these others. The culture (whatever that is) will blur out in areas with high concentration of these S/F/T.