The Burning Man Organization appear to have well and truly jumped the shark…perhaps for the last time. In their desperation for ticket sales, they have specifically requested sound camps to publish their lineups early.
This is ironic because doof doof electronic music has been a staple of Burning Man since its earliest days in the desert, as DJ Terbo Ted outlined for us in his epic guest post The Techno Ghetto – The History of Dance Music at Burning Man. And yet the Org have always fought hard against it – an exemplary example would be the Battle of Dancetronauts as told in Too Loud For Burning Man Parts 1, 2 and 3.
Hat tip to #NOTaDJ Itai, a star of the Tulum scene, for sharing this in true Burner spirit:
The missing part of the Org’s email:
We can tell this is legit because Carl Cox’s camp Playground would not do anything without the Org’s blessing, and they just posted their (dope) lineup:
It’s all about the Insta these days, Burners. Tag your friends and the Org. Burning Man have 1.5 million followers on Instagram and 157,000 on Twitter – where they haven’t posted for a year, despite Billionaire Burner Elon Musk being one of their most loyal and ardent supporters, famously saying “Burning Man IS Silicon Valley”.
My how times have changed. Here we have a checkmarked Burning Man account using DJ Tiesto’s name to promote walk-in sales in Reno:
Is it just me, or does it seem like they are really trying very, very hard to move these tickets?
Is this related to the rumblings we’ve been hearing of regime change on the horizon?
Spanky’s, a staple of Burning Man over man decades, are looking to unload 14 tickets below face value. Usually a couple of weeks away from the Burn, everyone would be scrambling to get tickets. I can’t think of a precedent for this.
Nothing surprises me after they hired someone a few years back to identify new profit centers. Sounds like that person smoked a bit too much and came up with this idea while playing in a drum circle. Sounds like the whole Org is micro-dosing a lot of different things in hopes that they suddenly become creative. I can hear the sound of their egos crushing under the weight of not selling out again. Sucks to be unfriended by a normie you don’t even like.