They’re listening. They’ve been listening for months. Their response? Continuing to sending their volunteers out online to cop the heat from the Burner community.
Now it’s the turn of Caveat Magister.
reblogged from blog.burningman.com:
12 Shocking Revelations about ultra-rich Burning Man plug-and-play camps!
I am as shocked as anyone that rich people came to Burning Man and behaved like rich people.
There’s only one explanation: it’s a conspiracy, and it goes all the way to the top! Yes! The only way people with money could have possibly used that money to try and game the system is if Burning Man was directly involved! In on it! We all know it, but you don’t the half of it!
Here are the 5 biggest, most shocking, examples, of plug-and-play malfeasance – and the Burning Man organization’s complicity in it!
- A group of prominent venture capitalists paid Larry Harvey $6 million to write them an extra-fun 11th principle that no-one else has.
What is it? I don’t know! You don’t know! But it’s got to be amazing, and we’re not living by it! Only they are!
- The compound prepared for the Walton family, which owns Wall-Mart, actually paid its greeters
They brought out a bunch of senior citizens to tell everyone on the playa to have-a-nice-day! They even hugged people! And then were paid minimum wage!
- Haliburton’s massive camp art project was really a derrick testing for oil under Black Rock City.
Sure it shot out flames, had a DJ, and Friday night’s Gushing Oil Party was awesome, but that’s not the point!
- Billionaire Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos’ theme camp never even came out in physical form, and instead was available only on Kindle.
Anyone who went is now under the terms and conditions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act! On the plus side, there was no MOOP.
- Warren Buffett slipped Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell $10 million to move Burning Man to Omaha, and fix it so nobody noticed.
That giant sculpture with the funky lights that everybody loved? That was really the Nebraska statehouse. We were so used!
And there’s MORE: […]
We can’t let them get away with this! Obviously we need to fix global income equality! Or bitch about how Burning Man’s run! Whichever is easier for us to do on the internet!
Burners.Me:
That’s how seriously they take the community’s concerns, Burners. They’re laughing at us. It’s all A Big Farce. The Simpsons guarantees them a steady stream of new tourists, so why should they be bothered with what a few thousand disgruntled Burners think?
The issue isn’t rich people at Burning Man. Rich people have always been going, and most of them are happy to be Burners like everyone else. They gift sound stages, or rides on their art cars, or food for hundreds or thousands, or a free bar, or an interactive art piece. They pick up after themselves, and pick up the MOOP of others. They take their bikes and their trash out with them when they leave.
The issue the community is most concerned about is the rise of Burner bingo-playing Commodification Camps, how they got so many tickets, and how they blatantly disregard the Tin Principles. We’re concerned about lack of transparency in the dealings of the new “non-profit” that now owns the event. We’re concerned about the for-profit dealings of some members of BMOrg’s Board of Directors who are commercializing our culture, trying to make money for themselves off the volunteer labor and freely given gifts of tens of thousands of Burners.
If BMOrg really were listening to Burners, they’d know that. The comments on their blog are pretty frikking clear.
Except for a few nut cases trying to foment a revolution with Burning Man as the front lines of their “class war”, most Burners don’t care how much money the person next to them has. It’s about what you bring to the party. We’re all the same in a dust storm and in the porta-potties. Camping in an RV doesn’t stop the call of Nature happening away when you’re far away from your camp; and having success in your career doesn’t somehow make you a “bad Burner”.
BMOrg would do well to respect the community’s concerns, instead of continuing with their line of the last few months: misdirection, silence, and laughing it all off.
In 2011, 5000 bikes were left behind. image: WendeWho Thompson, flickr/Creative Commons
I bought my RV on eBay for $19,000. It’s made it to the last 4 Burns. It didn’t magically make me never need to use a portapotty ever again. It’s nice to have a comfy bed, air conditioning, a fridge and an ice maker, and shelter from wind and dust storms. Plus the stereo CRANKS.
Filed under: Dark Path - Complaints Department Tagged: 2014, bmorg, civic responsibility, class war, commerce, commodification, communal effort, complaints, decommodification, gifting, leave no trace, participation, scandal, self expression, self reliance
