[Rico Suave]

It looks like a bunch of older people struggling to hold onto their youth.

Rico

[WanderingSoul]

Bunch of dirty fuckin hippies. Couldn't pay me to go.

[Veloce]

I've been curious about this as well. I've heard from some people "You have to go" and then seen pictures and footage and...meh.

It's also $400. It also looks predominantly white and obnoxious, like the people I see shopping at Whole Foods.

I think I would have enjoyed this in my 20s if it was cheaper then. In the late 90s, raves were $0-$5 to get in and a hit of acid was anywhere from $0-$3. Paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to sweat it out with a bunch of aging white people in the desert, and fuck a couple cellulite ridden sluts from Venice doesn't exactly strike a chord with me.

[Fortitudinal]

As you like guys. . . Nobody is forcing you.

But I met the guy from google, rocket scientists from JPL and lovely dames from all over. . . Really wild variety of people, although yes, the granola crunch is heavily represented.

It is what you make of it. Best holiday I've ever had. Truth and beauty sometimes hang out in strange places.

[allthethings]

I've been a few times. It's an incredible experience. I have never felt more present in my entire life. There's a sense of immediacy (that's one of the ten principles) that is unrivaled anywhere else on Earth.There's no "Oh let's meet up later" because everyone knows something will come up and you'll be distracted by a different shiny object/person. If you make a new friend you have an instant adventure buddy. You go and play and romp around like there's no tomorrow. It's one of the few times/places in my life where I don't feel like I need to be concerned with: career/technology/pursuing girls. When I'm there I feel absolutely overwhelmed and very sated. Every year I go I make incredible friends (that I see outside of burning man) and sometimes have really special romantic experiences. I'm now dating an actress who's just the bomb.

Long story short: Go for the art, the music, the dancing, the desert, the friendship, the late night conversations, the hugs, the camaraderie, the connection, the drugs, the adventure, etc, etc. If you want to focus on getting laid you'll certainly succeed. But you could also gain much much more out of the experience if you interact with people without preconceived intentions.

Here is one of the best photo series I've seen: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/...13/100584/

Now, about these ten principles. They create a framework that long time burners live by; this creates the culture people experience there. There are lots of side effects of these principles, and it's hard to "get it" unless you actually go.

Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

[allthethings]

Oh, and to those that think there are no beautiful women here...
http://mydotcomrade.com/women-of-burning-man/

[TripleG]

(10-24-2014 08:37 PM)allthethings Wrote:  

Oh, and to those that think there are no beautiful women here...
http://mydotcomrade.com/women-of-burning-man/

looks like one large sausage fest of hippies however if I was guaranteed to meet this chick I would fly there in a hearbeat:



which reminds me of this...

[Sgt]

Last week, Milo Yiannopoulos wrote a great piece on Burning Man:
Burning Man: A Modest Proposal

Quote:

To really understand just how monstrously terrifying Burning Man is, try to imagine if Tumblr came to life and started dropping acid.

[Biz]

Like everything "underground" these days it seems like BM has taken a turn for the worse with media coverage, celebrity, police state, instagram, etc.. I longed for the day when I could attend this but it seems to me it's taken a turn for the worse... I'm waiting for my DJ friends to tell me about this year..! Hopefully I have something to report back to

[Dusty]

David DeAngelo

[Giovonny]

For me, everyday is "burning man"!

Why do it for just one week of the year?

[Drazen]

These people look like the most annoying people on earth. Its like Coachella whores deciding to take it to the top level of attention seeking, all in the name of "finding themself".

[GlobalMan]

Looks like a nightmare to me. In a desert, coated with and choking on dust, annoying hippies on shrooms, women with poor hygiene...nah thanks

[Menace]

Never been, but I've met the burners. They're just modern-day hippies. The women are totally nothing special and frankly I'm too good for their lot. Not going to hate on them because they're doing something they enjoy and believe in without forcing others to do the same, but this gritty shit is not for me. 5 star and biz class 4 life son!

[ThrustMaster]

Yeah. No. Run into Burners every Labor Day on the Ho'Chi-Min trail as I love to call it. Makes me I wish I had dual RPG's mounted on the front wheel wells. Most of the chicks are old and fat hippies or fucked out 1,000 cock stare younger ones. Definitely no. If you want to see these people regularly hang out in Berkeley for a while.

[debeguiled]

I think this thing started out as a festival for alt-type artists from San Francisco years ago, and as it has become popular, it has become a sort of an adult second Halloween for the year, with more and more mainstream people showing up, and now there are even huge motor-home gated temporary communities for all the tech gazillionaires who want to experience the whole thing in comfort.

From what I have read on blogs and listened to on podcast interviews, a lot of the people who attend treat the whole thing as if it is on the same level as doing ayahuasca or ten years of therapy, but without the self reflection aspects. They talk about it kind of like cult members, like, man, I was hot and sweaty and hating it until I "surrendered myself to the experience" or some such crapola, and then they learned a safe life lesson.

The thing I don't like about a bunch of people celebrating together, especially when they aren't really celebrating anything tangible or meaningful beyond themselves, is that people are enough of a nightmare in their everyday selves, so who needs to be around them when they are actively expressing their own awesomeness, in the relative anonymity of being with mostly strangers, and the absolute anonymity of wearing masks.

I won't deny there are a lot of cool Maker Faire type stuff there involving welding, creativity and fire:






What bothers me is that I bet all this stuff, to no real purpose except to show off, carries all the markers of a religious festival without any of the substance behind it, and just makes people more pleased with themselves and each other than they normally are, which is a lot.

So in a way, Burning Man is just a retread of the human potential seminars like EST of the seventies, Lifespring of the eighties, Or Tony Robbins stuff of the nineties, yet there is no real learning, the lesson becomes look at all these wonderful creative people around me, and since I am here too, I can take partial credit for all the creativity, and wow us!

So I guess mentally, I just dismiss the whole thing, except every year I tend to see an article that recaps a bit from that year in pictures:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-2015.html

And I am all ho hum until I see a picture like this one:




Or maybe even this one:



And I can't help but have my erotic imagination given a bit of a goose, and I think, well maybe....... And I am of course forgetting that in order to get near either of those two, I will have to befriend these kind of guys:





Or maybe have to shoulder past something monstrous like:




And I am back to meh.