Jsnawder wrote:Do you have any insight into the different subsets of the burning man subculture that you personalty experienced or learned?
The jocks, stoners, and nerds.
No wait, that's a set of subsets of another subculture.
Seriously, it's all individuals. This was my first year, and before the event I expected to meet a lot of people who come to reinforce some label they've chosen for themselves. People who come to make stories that will be badges for their ego.
The Wild Hedonist who is looking to make a story about the naked drug orgy.
The Experience Collector who does weird things to be interesting, always looking for the ideal cocktail party anecdote that is something like discussing space-time on top of a walking steel dragon with a name droppable artist.
Maybe another way of saying this is I expected to see a lot of folks using other people to masturbate themselves on their karmic ego hamster wheel. But I was wrong, that only seems to happen online. For some reason there aren't many people there who are so caught up in their own bullshit. Everyone I met was very genuine and down to earth.
For subsets, there are those who have a certain job or work on a large project. They wear a kind of uniform, and an initial attitude can be part of the uniform. Just like the CB, where the truckers won't give you the time of day unless you talk like a hick.
But I think it is uninteresting because it is so shallow. It's seems a bit like a Victorian gentleman scientist who collects butterflies. You'll certainly find some exotic specimens, but in the end you are wasting time cataloging a shallow part of the individual and collective experience and will not have learned anything meaningful.
