Is This The Real Reason the Live Stream Is Down? [Update: Up and Down]

 

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:

2017 live stream

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:

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.39.49

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.

larry harvey on slavery

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”.

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.30.53

[Source]

Being 4chan/pol/ , the race card was immediately played:

Screenshot 2017-08-30 12.23.00

Screenshot 2017-08-30 12.23.28

It took all of about 5 minutes of 4chan discussion before our Shadow History of Burners series was brought up, by a Japanese poster.

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.42.01

And they came back 15 minutes later with more:

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.44.16

and then:

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.48.13

“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.

Screenshot 2017-08-30 12.26.53

Meanwhile, Anon shitposters were suggesting someone let AntiFa know that all the black people at Burning Man were alt-right sympathizers.

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.45.29

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.46.52.pngScreenshot 2017-08-30 11.46.25

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”:

Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.54.00Screenshot 2017-08-30 11.58.28

[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.

pol nothing beyond our reach

Bringing Burning Man to Berkeley

There is a free event tomorrow in Berkeley, to promote Burning Man culture. The CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association, John Caner, teamed up with some independent Burners who wanted to see more Burner art in the East Bay. They decided to throw a community-building event in the spirit of the festival.

The second annual Berkeley Spark will happen in Civic Center Park (Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way) this Saturday, July 19. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

From East Bay Express:

If you ask someone who has been to Burning Man to explain it, they’ll often say that you can’t fully understand the magnificence of the experience until you go. But for those who aren’t up for the trek (or the dust), there’s now a way to grasp the event without leaving the safety of the Berkeley bubble: Berkeley Spark.

John Caner, CEO, Downtown Berkeley Association

John Caner

The idea for Berkeley Spark came about partly through the organizing efforts of Downtown Berkeley Association CEO John Caner, who hadn’t attended Burning Man until last year. In October 2012, Caner was walking past Revival Bar + Kitchen after Berkeley’s Sunday Streets festival when owner — and burner — Amy Murray asked him to meet some fellow burners who were discussing how to bring Burning Man art downtown. Eventually, the group realized that instead of merely bringing the art of Burning Man to Berkeley, they could go a step further and create a community-building event in the spirit of the festival.

spark festival berkeleyKat Parkin, who has been attending Burning Man for six years, had recently moved back to the East Bay after 25 years away and decided to take the lead on organizing the event as a way to re-immerse herself in her surroundings. “I’ve been gone a long time, and what better way to get to know my community than by throwing a party?” she said.

berekely mapDescribed as a “community-driven art, innovation, science, and technology festival,” the second annual Berkeley Spark will happen in Civic Center Park (Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way) this Saturday. It will feature a market with items that those going to Burning Man may need on the playa, interactive art sculptures, Burning Man theme camps, workshops, food, a beer and wine garden, and a hip-hop open mic, a musical performance by Laura Inserra from the multidisciplinary performing art and music organization Samavesha.


While the festival does offer resources for those preparing for a trip to the playa in August, organizers emphasized that the event is intended for the whole community. “It’s really a fun festival that isn’t just about Burning Man,” said Caner. “It’s about igniting creativity.”

Michael Caplan, City of Berkeley

Michael Caplan

The organizers also hope that the event draws more people to the downtown Berkeley area and highlights its cultural and commercial revitalization. To that end, the City of Berkeley sponsored the event last year and is doing so again this year. “We’re the first city to put money into a Burning-Man-related project,” said Michael Caplan, Berkeley’s economic development manager. Caplan’s hope is that the tech innovation corridor — a new feature of the festival where attendees can meet with local designers, hackers, and innovators — will help generate enthusiasm for Berkeley’s emerging start-up and maker scene. “Bringing several thousand people who are interested in Burning Man to come and experience downtown — that’s a good thing,” he said.

Despite the City of Oakland putting money into the event – the first city to do so with a Burning Man related project – BMOrg have been uncharacteristically quiet on this. It seems to perfectly fit the mission of the Burning Man Project to facilitate and extend Burner culture, so what gives, BMOrg? No keynote panel opportunities for your directors? Or still feeling “burned” from when the East Bay community didn’t like you claiming all the credit for the Peralta Junction project?