Lyft just got in trouble with Burning Man. It seems that one of their quirky community of drivers (I’m more of an Uber guy myself) put their trademark pink moustache on a Mutant Vehicle.
Burning Man didn’t like it:
@jackiehesley @burningman Sorry about that! This photo was taken by a community member who brought her 'stache to the festival.
— Lyft (@lyft) September 12, 2014
Luckily, Lyft removed it quicker than you can say “Decommodification, LLC”
@jackiehesley @burningman We have removed the tweet now.
— Lyft (@lyft) September 12, 2014
Tweeter @earlyclues pointed out the hypocrisy of the Burnier-Than-Thou who ratted out Lyft to BMOrg, and yet is blatantly using a Burning Man image in their own Twitter page to promote themselves as a real estate agent.
https://twitter.com/earlyclues/status/510541723039432705
As always…where do you draw the line? It is hard for me to see that Lyft did anything harmful to the event, it’s not like they were using the image for TV spots or billboards. The other Burner, though, is clearly using imagery from Burning Man for self-promotion. It’s their profile, not a tweet. How come this is good, and Lyft was bad?
BMOrg say nothing about the Volkswagen commercial, though as far as I know Volkswagen themselves weren’t tweeting it. In 2013, they awarded art grants to Apple iPhone and Facebook Like pieces.
[Update 9/13/14 3:02pm]
The reason the moustache was on “Big Red”, the oversized Volkswagen Beetle art car, was for a pink party.
Way to go, Burnier-Than-Thous! “How dare someone add something pink for a pink party! They’ve ruined Burning Man forever!”
The Lyft ‘stache has been spotted elsewhere on the Playa too:
How is this commodifying Burning Man in any way? I think selling hotel rooms for $13,000 each is much worse than putting a stupid furry moustache on an art car.