Playa Phone

Maybe they could come back and offer "free" service in high-density areas and fund via pre-roll ads or something. But perhaps the culture of remembering phone numbers is too far gone and it's easy enough to find charging.

Thank you for making and posting about this!

Tech, finance, and political people definitely don't make up close to the majority. You'd get sort of laughed at if you tried networking earnestly about like tech stocks or LLMs. Generally I don't prefer socializing with techie types from SF, the folks I met at Burning Man were nothing of the sort.

It's mostly just adults who really like dressing up, building stuff, and staying up really late dancing and partying.

It's changed over the years - price has gone up, scale has gone up, and rules have become more strict. Not surprising when there are 70k people instead of 3k. Some people (fairly) don't like these changes. And some people like to badmouth things they've never experienced.

It's still the best party going on anywhere in the world that week. Most people you meet are not in tech. The crazy art pieces (most of which are interactive) are like nothing you will find anywhere else. It's definitely fun.

I stopped going regularly because it's a big expense and time commitment and I wanted to allocate my limited budget of both to other adventures. But if you haven't been, you should go.

The last time I went, there was this dude in a camp next to where I was camped. The entire week I was there, I only saw him sitting and drinking; he was totally hammered the entire 7 days and didn't go anwhere (AFAICT). That really saddened me: he could have done the same back home wherever he had come from; what's the point of coming to BM if you're going to just sit in one place and get drunk?

I really wanted to take it all in, so I stayed away from drinking or smoking, and had a great time! There is so much to see, so many creative people to interact with. You can end up having a deep conversation on just about any topic under the sky with random people. I ended up chatting with this Physics graduate student about, of all things, quarks (an area of specialty for him). He ended up patiently explaining various things to me, as if we were long-lost friends.

My recommendation: jump in with both feet in the spirit of contribution and cooperation. Have fun, respect boundaries, contribute however you can.

That being said, the very nature of the event involves spending thousands of dollars to live in the desert for a week. So the audience is obviously mostly people who have the money to do so.

I’d encourage you to talk to people that have actually been if you want to have an informed opinion. I don’t know shit about it since my n=1 sample size, but he’s someone who’s opinion I trust so I’d personally probably check it out if I was inclined.

I was at a different kind of retreat which in some sense opened a portal to "another world" for a week and I'd say the regional Burning Man events were controversial in that circle. Like some people went to them and thought they were great, other people went to them and picketed the access road to protest their perception that the events were a wasteful use of fossil fuels. Here's an article about similar protests at the main event

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-...

Some people treat it like a music festival and chase DJs the whole week. Some people immerse themselves in the rest of the culture.

The demographics have definitely been skewing wealthier over time, but it’s still around 50% under $100k income and 10% over $300,000 according to the (admittedly unscientific) census.

https://blackrockcitycensus.org/sociodemo

well you're here at hacker news

I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494151

He is a tech guy, though.

But he keeps having to go to oil production facilities on site in Wyoming to maintain IT infra. It pays okay but it's not the kind of stuff I would do now that I'm mostly able to retire into audio/music work and the minimal amount of festival EMT/ free clinic volunteer stuff I do.

He's a genuine and kind person and has spent a lot of time doing nice things for folks because he likes doing those things. For instance, he was running the makerlab here in the sticks for a couple of years. He got the American legion hall setup so there is now a space for local artists to play.

That's how I know him, at least.

There are a lot of folks in this world who've gotten to some degree of comfortability some way or other, usually some combination of "the old fashioned way" (my parents passed on and left me their IRA) or the more usual way of working for several decades at some tedious skill that pays well in some circumstances.

Folks like my buddy have made a rational decision to just "kind of do whatever"; he has what he needs, he's not super old, and if you've managed to secure a spot out in the middle of nowhere and figure out not-too-annoying-but-inexpensive ways of maintaining that lifestyle, then a lot of options open up.

According to him, he brings a lot of generator equipment and tools (including a welder) and spends his time out there fixing stuff for folks or maintaining stuff like the poorly-configured mesh network equipment other, similarly minded nerds bring out. He troubleshoots folks' generators or vehicles.

Does that sound fun?

It sounds fun to me, to just go somewhere and help folks when I can.

Even if a lot of those folks are spun, or dumb, or party people trying to social climb or whatever. I am certain that given the fame and the proxemity to SF-style wealth there are plenty of well off folks trying to party with folks while networking, but I am equally certain that there are a whole rainbow of other ways that folks are being out there.

I don't like being at events that large, so that rules it out for me, in the same way that I have spent a lot of time at Kerrville Folk Fest but have avoided the Rainbow Gathering.

And to be clear, he's going to a party and it's an easy place to find "unique" substances or people to have fun with.

But I do see how there has to be some amount of community there, given how many folks are going to be with people and not just be tourists.

I am likely projecting to a small degree, but my impression is that largely that's the vibe out there, folks enjoying doing things because they find them satisfying rather than because they can monetize the behavior somehow.

Maybe that satisfaction is dressing up fancy and doing many days worth of drugs. Maybe that is running a bar for strangers, maybe that's making art for other folks to enjoy, maybe it's fixing busted bicycles, maybe it's getting a generator running again.

Having been "involved" with a certain amount of off grid raves and other kinds of gatherings, that's my general understanding of that culture. I'd assume it is in play out there as well.

https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ -- "Decommodification" is the most important one to keep in mind, particularly with this audience, as I imagine some here would have trouble not trying to productify/commodify everything

What type of fun it ends up being for you is the question - the fun scale: https://kellycordes.com/2009/11/02/the-fun-scale/

I started by going to a regional burn (or what some people call a "ten principles event") because a girlfriend had a bunch of friends that wanted to go. I had always been a bit in awe of the art and such from BM itself, but weary of the drugs/party culture (I was a nerd that made the annual trip to San Diego Comic-Con, PAX, etc) and didn't think it'd be my scene.

Without going down an entire rabbit hole: it changed the entire trajectory of my life. I've made the best friends I've ever had and now spend a good chunk of my time working on large art projects, helping run a theme camp, and being involved in this group of weirdos year round.

A few years of being involved locally made the desert seem like an inevitability, and when I finally went, it wasn't the life changing experience everyone told me it'd be: because it already was, even without me being there. But it did quickly become one of my favorite places in world.

My honest advice? If you're anywhere near a Burning Man regional event, find a way to get involved and check that out first. I think that's a great way to see if you vibe with the culture around the event, and it'll give you a sense of whether trekking out to the desert is a good fit.

Also, as an aside on the wealthy tech/finance front: one of the first camps I shacked up with was mostly a bunch of blue collar types who liked to work hard, with two retired grandmother-type figures who helped run camp logistics. Tech money (including mine) certainly helps fund things (because the city is expensive to build), but at least in the scene I run in, the tech types are not the majority, and sure don't act like your typical tech bros.

You're not far off.

Burning Man is like Coachella, SxSW, and San Francisco, itself.

It used to be cool, and interesting, and counter-culture.

But then it got overrun by tech people and grifters and assorted wannabes who think they can buy their way to coolness, when that's something that can only come from within.

If you want to hang out with those people it will be fun for you, but be honest with yourself about what it really is.

It used to get a little bit of Internet directly from Burning Man itself via a 20 foot tower pointed near center camp, but now it just uses Starlink, which is easier for my campmates to set up without me and much more reliable.

For power, it is now plugged into a solar generator that is occasionally recharged from a gas generator.

If you are genuinely curious, here are the original ten principles of Burning Man that were established when the event was still in San Francisco:

https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/

I never was there, but it seems a place where people do creative things, with bringing people together - like this simple project here.