‘Incredibly unusual’: Burning Man ticket sales dry up after sloppy year
‘Incredibly unusual’: Burning Man ticket sales dry up after sloppy year
Burning Man releases 3,000 last-minute tickets amid slow-to-recover sales after last year's mudfest.
“We are pleased to have fulfilled demand for our earlier sales and be in a position to offer greater access to more people as the event nears,” Marian Goodell, CEO of Burning Man, said in a press release.
CEO of Burning Man
Lmfao.
Washed up psycho Marian Goodell has a problem... the Burning Man festival is no longer "hot"
There's something very funny to me about Burning Man purporting to be about people helping each other and everyone bringing something, which is why there shouldn't be any amenities maaan, bring your own water maaan, but the organizers still find it necessary to have infrastructure that forces you to have a ticket. I don't know what that infrastructure is, but it's got to be something, otherwise people wouldn't buy tickets. It's literally doing the "powerless help you, not hurt you!" bit.
Like it's just so fucking boomer-hippie faux-hallelujah "were all together, we're all a family" bullshit. Why do I need a ticket then? To pay for some paperwork? Sure, but why is it so expensive?
It's stereotypical or something I dunno. Ironic. Just a bunch of people forcing you to pay a bunch of money to be at a festival in the desert where the concept is we all bring something, which is why there's no basic infrastructure, except for the big burly guys making sure you paid to be here. Wouldn't want the poors present in our self-sufficient commune.
Like at this point it's just like every other festival, but the marketing hype makes people think they shouldn't have access to water.Also
Marisa Lenhardt has led the Death Guild Thunderdome camp, one of the better-known desert camps specializing in concocting gothic (but friendly) cage fights.
This reads like a someone on twitter trying to make up what a bunch redditors would think would be cool to have at a music festival.
I mean the thing is huge and presumably securing rights to the playa, paying for all the people to staff the thing, lay out the roads, do communications and stuff is expensive. But should only be a couple bucks or so.
I understand it has been ruined by techbros from SF that roll in with exclusive VIP trailers, Elon musk types basically. Maybe even musk himself actually. And with those guys came an increased willingness to pay and presumably elevated prices, and more exclusivity. So the same fate that happens to anything quirky and artistic. Capitalist shitheads ruin it for everyone.
I've never been but I wish I had gone when I was younger. Apparently 20 years ago it was pretty cool.
Among other things there's a post office, air field, presumably grants for artists, they probably have to pay the cops the be there (lol), and a bunch of other shit.
Idk if it was ever actually cool. I think there have always been, and still are, cool communities and groups within BM, but to my eye the big picture event has always been cringe.
why is it so expensive?
I was going to say paying off the local piggies and for use of the land, but I did some research and it seems no, at least pre covid that was only like 300k of a 45+ million USD budget. Until 2018 there are IRS forms online showing expenditures. Seems like they have a lot of staff judging by the payroll figures, probably way too many of them are year round employees. during 2020 they were reportedly already begging for donations saying they were running out of money from "running a global nonprofit without our primary source of revenue" (source https://redlib.northboot.xyz/r/BurningMan/comments/iv0uza/your_daily_reminder_that_burning_man_is/ )
It's much, much more than that. Just the permit from the BLM is north of $1 million. We're also required to directly pay the salaries of all the cops that are there, as well as provide food, housing, laundry, cooks, fuel, and other amenities to them. The vast, vast majority of the ticket revenue goes to permitting and law enforcement.
On their website they have something like 120 year round staff. These people are probably making good bank for the most part. $200k average? That's $24M there.
They build a temporary city to accomodate 70,000 people in one of the harshest, most inhospitible places on earth.
Also thunderdome fighting is so much fun. Idk about burning man but wasteland weekend has the whole set up from Mad Max so it's goofballs bouncing around on bungie cords whacking each other with foam bats while the crowd roars. It's good silly mostly harmless fun. If you don't know "Thunderdome" is a setpiece from the movie of the same name. The protagonist has to battle the deuteragonist to the death inside a large geodesic dome. Weapons of all kinds are strapped to the dome and the fighters are hooked in to bungie harnesses so they can "fly" around the arena. Meanwhile the crowd is climbing all over the dome shouting abuse and encouragement. It's a fun scene and larpers and related goofballs like to use it as a premise for boffer (safe foam weapons) fighting.
Well luckily the only people who go to burning man are boomers and psychopathic millennials whose brain is 50% stocks, 20% NYT, 20% real estate, and 10% voting
i don't see how anyone can look at the Burning Man Board of Directors and think that it is anything except another fucking corporate shakedown.
i mean, literally 10 years ago the criticisms of how elitist and infiltrated it was were so widespread that even i had heard them.
literally 10 years ago the criticisms of how elitist and infiltrated it was
10 years? Shit, those criticisms have around since about 2005, if not earlier.
There was a social media site called Tribe.net that was filled with mostly Burners since Tribe was hq'd in San Francisco. I remember looking in the Burning Man tribe of the site and seeing complaints of how "sold out" the event had become because techbros, going to the desert to drop acid and look at topless hippie chicks, had taken over their art event, and thus the organizers begun charging cash money, ridiculous prices for what used to be a free-ish event.
burning man
board of directors
Same. Can't imagine it got better during the last decade plus
Thank you for that link. It was very funny to read through ghoul bios
Why would anyone pay to get Ebola?
Award-worthy bit
I sincerely cannot understand why anyone would find the idea of spending a week in the scorching desert sun listening to the Grateful Dead's grandchildren playing their music before sleeping in a tent with just enough water to not die of dehydration fun.
I can, however, imagine a person who would find that fun, and now I can't imagine how that person would pay $1500/person to go to that.
For the burners I know it's a profound experience of community, connection, love, and wonder. They're genuinely kind, sorta dumb hippies who really do pour their heart and soul in to the art they bring out to Black Rock. They get to see all their friends, take off all the masks society forces them to wear, be wild and free from the day to day drudgery of a society that hates them for being weird. They move heaven and earth, bum rides, beg borrow and steal to get out there.
It's incredibly sad. To them Burning Man is a kind of glimpse of paradise and most of them don't seem to recognize that they're the trained monkeys performing for the real audience of rich tech bros who inflict the very misery and poverty they're seeking to escape from. Or maybe they do know and don't care, seizing an opportunity for genuine community and belonging in spite of the crass larger picture of "the burn".
I think the appeal is there's usually a ton of free drugs there. And casual sex if you're hot enough.
a few more years of this (scaring off the techbros) and burning man might be kinda cool again
That's what we're all hoping.
Permanently Deleted
Why hasn't Burning Man turned into a giant crypto grift by now anyway? Or has it?
It always was, it was just waiting for crypto to be invented. There's a sheer cliff of class divide between the rich techbros who fly in to party and the poor working artists who bring all the cool shit. But it's always been a place for tech bros to go slumming with the freaks and geeks. Having spent time with burners i don't think it was ever "good". The " good" parts have always been people who find community despite the hyperindividualist neoliberal cultural void of burning man at a high level.
The blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of Rachel Jake.
Burning man is still a thing? Lol
I thought this was a thing that washed up rich folks spend their money on to buy 'cultural experience'. I'm surprised this is still a thing...actually maybe not.
As time goes on, artists I know have been going to Burning Man less and less. I'm not sure it was ever great, but it seems it's become a lot more "rich Californian" and less "independent artist"
It's been trending farther and farther in to the depths of shitty tech bro orgy for decades. Idk if it ever was actually cool. I know a bunch of burners who are actual weird poor artists, and they have to all pool their couch money, bum rides, save, and "volunteer" to afford to go. Meanwhile wealthy people just buy all the shit they need and when they're done "leaving no trace" they dump tens of tons of trash in nearby cities and towns in Nevada. It's all an ugly, gaudy sham of hyperindividualism, exploitation, bougie gentrification of art as a concept, and dickbaggery. My weird burner buddies love it to death and all i can see is the hollow commodification of art by capitalism as incredibly rich people create this massive altar to hipocrisy where they bring in tons of weirdos so they can pretend to have culture while they do drugs and wander around naked then fuck off back to San Francisco to leave the artists who make it possible to starve and suffer for another year.
I feel like all the magic has flowed down into the smaller regional burns at this point. Those are obviously hit or miss depending on your local scene, and you don't get quite the same huge community pieces as the big burn, but there's usually plenty enough to keep you busy just checking everything out for the whole event anyways, let alone a thousand times that if you really get involved with volunteering/organizing. Hell in a previous state I lived in, there were a few smaller local burns and then a bigger state-wide one, so even then you could kinda pick and choose how big and crazy of a thing you wanted to attend/do.
I need to start looking at local options around here...
Burning Man was pretty tech bro from the get go, it was literally founded by a group of San Fran entrepreneurs who's annual beach party kept getting more and more elaborate. I think the only guy from that OG group still involved is some libertarian weirdo.
The event was pretty popular with weird indie artists for a while but there was always a tech bro element to it.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Guy who has a mud fetish buying a ticket only to be disappointed this year.
incredibly unusual
you think so?
Didn’t they already do this like 3 months ago?
