The biggest camp at Burning Man is Camp Envy: those of us who aren’t physically on the Playa, but instead want some sense of participation by watching the live stream from the comfort of our home or office.
The stream was supposed to be live at noon on Sunday; then they kept pushing it back. Check here to see if it’s working
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVAyiqfH6gUq5FwzfoP2YA/live
As I write this, they’re going to be live “in 57 minutes”. It’s been “coming soon” for days now. [Update: 8/29/17 6:11pm PST they missed the deadline again. Stream still down]
[Update 8/29/17 6:26pm PST it’s up with a 15-minute delay for some reason. Apparently a lot of Internet connectivity problems]
[Update 8/29/17 9:27pm PST it’s been down for a few hours]
[Update 8/29/16 10:19 PST it’s back up again]
Here’s the official story of events:
Quite vague, really – “a highly unusual set of circumstances”. And made all the more mysterious because this year also BMIR, the live audio stream, was off the air for many weeks due to “administrative issues”.
Motorbike Matt has some technical chops – he’s run space missions for GoPro and JPL. He wanted me to clarify that NASA did not sponsor any of his (or anyone else’s) involvement with the Mars Rover Art Car – it’s a project people do on their time off.
The live video stream is a utility of Black Rock City provided to us by the Burning Man Project out of their $40 million annual ticket haul – something given to us by volunteers and not regulated by the FCC like BMIR is.
Everything seemed to be on track for the video stream to turn on when Burning Man’s gates opened, until on Friday afternoon at 1:11pm, I went live on the YouTube channel Lift The Veil, talking about Burning Man and Radical Ritual.
We were done by about 3pm PST.
At 4:55pm PST someone started a racist 4chan thread Operation Diversify Burning Man
A GoFundMe was started to support diversity at Burning Man by busing in people of color from economically challenged urban areas.
At 7:26pm PST on Friday August 25th, an Anonymous shitposter put this on another 4chan thread:
Straight away, the infamous alt-right army of 4chan’s politically incorrect /pol/ discussion group was into it. The claim that the guy who runs Burning Man said blacks don’t go because it reminds them of slavery is actually true, Larry Harvey really did say that.
The 2016 Census results (% Virgin: 39.3%) show an ethnic mix of 1.1% black and 4.3% hispanic.
The largest religious group is Catholic, with 7%, followed closely by Jewish 6.4%. 71.5% said “no religion”.
Interestingly, Google – who champion themselves as the voice of diversity, while firing employees with conservative values – have about the same proportion of black and hispanic.
Google’s overall workforce is 56% White, 35% Asian, 4% two or more races, 4% Hispanic or Latinx, 2% Black and less than 1% American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. On its report, Google groups the last two categories together under the heading “Other.“
[Source]
Google is 56% white, Burning Man is 80% white. This compares with the overall tech sector which is 7.4% black and 8% Latino. [Source]
Google is 69% male – only 20% of people in technical roles are women, and 25% in leadership roles. Burning Man is 57% male, 41% female – 1.8% are “fluid/both/neither”.
[Source]
Being 4chan/pol/ , the race card was immediately played:
It took all of about 5 minutes of 4chan discussion before our Shadow History of Burners series was brought up, by a Japanese poster.
And they came back 15 minutes later with more:
and then:
“Super Autist” – high praise indeed in this group (it is true, I am an IRL shitposter – like Taylor Swift?)
Little did they realize that I would be finishing the story up with part 7 the very next day:
…where the Autist Army of Kek and Pepe even gets a mention.
Meanwhile, Anon shitposters were suggesting someone let AntiFa know that all the black people at Burning Man were alt-right sympathizers.
And then, at 20:15 – still less than an hour from the original post, they bring up the live stream, and suggest using it to stage “happenings”:
[Source]
This is coming fresh on the heels of the “March on Google” being postponed due to “credible alt-left terrorist threats”, over a weekend in the Bay Area that saw masked AntiFa thugs beating people with sticks in the name of stopping hate and stealing a journalists phone because he wore a blue shirt.
Insane Cultural Marxists are in an absolute frenzy of fear, paranoia, rage and idiocy right now. Freedom of Speech is their number one enemy.
Likewise, although BMorg like to call themselves “unlikely leader in transparency”, they are in fact renonwed for propaganda, rhetoric and obfuscation. The Hero’s Journey only works if you are the one telling the story.
I could imagine the many employees of the BMorg PR team, experts in spinning the narrative in directions of their own control, watching in horror as the same kind of 4-chan fueled alt-right meme attacks that took down their beloved Satanic Witch Hillary and continue to decimate the Social Justice Warrior Progressive movement by exposing them for the hypocrites they are were shifted to a new target: Burning Man, with the live stream as their rallying cry. A live stream showing very few black people, which also has comments disabled…if this culture is so good for the world, what is so scary about the world seeing it and talking about it?
Hey, perhaps there’s another perfectly good explanation for why the feed is down. One they just don’t want to give us.
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where is the live stream, has the plug been pulled permanently due to you tube guidelines?
Looks like the live stream is up, with 3K watching:
https://youtu.be/Dv8K17WJeGg
Looks like they are having fun. Lots of great music and activity on screen. Oops… sorry, I was watching 2001 on TCM.
The http://BMIR.ORG makes good audio, since it is non-existant in the live stream. Too bad the live stream video cannot show what BMIR is broadcasting. (Maybe someone can bring a really long headphone extension cord next year.)
The YouTube video is still running, but the limited audio is over, as is the BMIR feed.
“It was better next year….” Let’s hope so. Pretty sad.
Both audio feeds seem to be back now.
So, following the NPD/cult rules, more money means less for those who are not paying the ever increasing fees to be part of the Org.
If the Borg really wanted to spread the magic, they would have traveling audio and video feeds from the playa so the whole world could experience the event. Eh, what do you want for $20 million a year in overhead.
http://img03.deviantart.net/72b4/i/2013/188/b/f/quote_wallpaper_4___less_is_more_by_lukeafirth-d6ccowa.png
That whirring sound is Mies van der Rohe spinning in his grave.
The Org doesn’t like Camp Envy because it’s something for free. They’ve been slowly reducing it, taking features away from the camera and pointing it at nothing, etc.
Also, the person who died under the Shagadelica happened right in front of the camera. The Org doesn’t like that kind of stuff getting out. Bad for business.
They’ve added features. Last year they bought a new camera with a crazy lens that could zoom in all the way into deep playa. You are incorrect, sir or madam.
I’ll say! No boring silent static shots of the playa. They must have one hell of a lens. They are getting shots of the ISS with some nice Strauss music track.
…Sorry, that was 2001 again.
For those students of TV production, no secondary or tertiary motion for about the past 4 hours. Just a fixed live shot with only primary motion.
At least there’s a bunch of pyrotechnic effects (from the Burners)
Yes, but only in the framed shot, which includes the headlights from some LE vehicle. Could only be worse if you were there and had your retinas all bleached up from the brightness glare.
Single camera work is an art, using secondary motion to make things interesting, even if it’s your only camera. Such a waste, though possibly intentionally boring as Fannie suggests. It would be as if BMIR was only a live feed from a mic on the playa.
None of what Fannie has to say is grounded in reality.
Hey there. Thanks for being clear and reiterating that I was a private contractor and that NASA played no role in the development of the Mars Rover Art Car. That was all of our private cash.
I also need to correct you here too:
“The live video stream is a utility of Black Rock City provided to us by the Burning Man Project”
The live video stream is NOT a utility. It’s not regulated by FCC like BMIR is, and it’s a purely voluntary effort led by independant folks like me. I’ve been responsible for it for the past three years and hope I get invited back to take care of it again next year.
As for the real reason why the stream was late; well it was a combo of factors but indeed we had major connectivity issues with our ISPs and the subsequent down times were the result of having to optimize my computer for the new setup.
Thanks for correcting the record! 🙂
Done, thanks Matt. Still sounds a little mysterious to me, hope all the issues have been sorted out now.
I don’t have all the answers, but they usually do a full debrief at the WiFi summits in May. Check it out next year for the deets.
I have a feeling everything sounds a little mysterious to you.
Not at all. Some things are blindingly obvious.
forgive me, what is /pol/
4chan’s politically incorrect discussion group http://boards.4chan.org/pol/