OMG Now Lottery? More Vehicle Passes

If you want to enter the OMG sale, for the 1000 3000 unknown number of tickets that are still on sale from the “sold out” event:  registration starts at noon tomorrow. Don’t worry about getting there at 12:01 or 12:07, because according to BMOrg they have abandoned the “first come first serve” idea, which was used to trick Burners into waiting for months in STEP. So, since FCFS is gone, are we back to a ticket lottery now?

From Burning Man’s Facebook group:

Heads up… there’s no need to rush to the servers for the OMG sale registration. The registration process is not first-come first-served. Exactly when you register during the registration period (Thursday, July 31, 12pm (noon) PDT through Monday, August 4 at 12pm (noon) PDT) will have no impact on gaining access to the sale. So there ya go. 

Heads up your asses.

Their statement seems to me to be very misleading. When you register has a huge impact on gaining access to the sale, not “no impact”. You have to register again during their window, even if you’ve created a Burner profile and registered for STEP already…or you won’t be able to get access to the sale at all. The sale starts on Wednesday August 6 at noon Pacific. So if “first come first served” doesn’t apply, how does one get a ticket? You need to be pre-registered, and get to the servers as close to 12:00:00 as you can on Wednesday. The tickets will be sold to whoever gets there first, so although “the registration process is not first-come first-served”, as far as we can tell the OMG sale that the registration process gets you into still is.

Why do we have to register at all? Why can’t they just open tickets for sale to anyone who wants them next Wednesday? “Because, reasons”. Perhaps it has to do with that little question they ask during this bizarrely convoluted process: “how many times have you been to Burning Man before?” Statistically, you have a much better chance of getting tickets if you answer 0 to this, than any other number. Pro tip: there is nothing in the Tin Principles or Survival Guide about honesty or truth.

If you don’t have a Vehicle Pass yet, don’t worry – you can log into OMG to get more, even if you don’t want to buy tickets.

Did you purchase a Burning Man ticket already, but still need a Vehicle Pass? You can buy one in the upcoming OMG Sale. Follow the instructions on the OMG Sale registration page (in Burner Profiles) once registration is live, between Thursday, July 31, 12pm (noon) PDT and Monday, August 4 at 12pm (noon) PDT. http://profiles.burningman.com/

More vehicle passes? I thought we were doing this to reduce traffic and help the environment? Sadly, the number of vehicle passes initially announced was about the same as the number of cars last year, so from the start there was no way the system could’ve reduced traffic. A few weeks out from the event, and whaddya know, there are still plenty more available to anyone who wants one – as we predicted in January.

It seems the twin objectives of “new tax” and “new scalper opportunity for insiders” were well met by the Vehicle Pass idea, with a bonus of being able to say to the authorities “we’ve taken measures to address the issue of traffic on the roads” while pleading for 100,000 population.

Oh. My. Greed.