Burning Man, Bugs, and the CIA

Alex Jones’ show InfoWars is one of the most successful alternative media platforms in the world. You can catch it Monday-Friday at 9am-noon PST. They are known for a diligent focus on the truth, being brave enough to make controversial claims that conflict with mainstream media talking points programming, and always making an effort to provide references to their claims. A bit like a certain Burner-related site that I can think of…

I am an Alex Jones fan, and have been since about as long as I’ve been going to Burning Man. So it was pretty exciting for me to see a conspiracy theory that has been kicked around on our Facebook page for a few days get a detailed investigation by his producer Rob Dew, who is a 2-time Burner.

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Hey Alex and Rob, if you’re reading this, you should have me on the show to talk about Burning Man and how it fits into the globalist plans for a New World Order.  Email me here.

There are enough coincidences and political interest floating around Burning Man this year to lend some weight to potential conspiracy theories. The fact that the bugs themselves are relatively harmless means we can rule out a bio-weapon. It would be more of a nuisance attack, like mailing envelopes of white powder to people and having them freak out that it’s anthrax.

The Bugpocalypse could have been a deliberate infestation, perhaps by someone disgruntled over Chocotacogate, and the corresponding turf wars and position re-shufflings going on around the place. We have a new Sheriff in Pershing County who seems pretty negative towards Burning Man. Gene Siedlitz who usually runs the event for the BLM, was suddenly shifted to a new assignment in the Minerals division. We have the Humboldt General Hospital medical team contract being cancelled abruptly, to be replaced with CrowdRX who don’t have experience in remote locations. We have Special Agent Dan Love, who ran the Bundy Ranch standoff, named and shamed by the Reno Gazette Journal as the force behind ChocoTacoGate. We have Harry Reid coming out of retirement and injury recovery to publicly chastise the BLM and side with Burning Man. A lot of strange, unprecedented changes happening in the event all at once, with political pressures at State, County, and Federal levels. Pershing County is very concerned about the mixture of nudity and children. Last year a local judge called Burning Man’s settlement with Pershing County “absurd, illegal, and mealy mouthed”. BMOrg are also fighting the Nevada State legislature’s 9% Live Entertainment Tax, which they think shouldn’t apply to them because they are an arts festival not a music one. We also have the BLM’s bug teams in the area, quite possibly on site, having just located mosquitos with West Nile Virus in both Washoe and Pershing Counties. Last year West Nile virus was detected in mosquitos in Gerlach, and there were reports of the CDC being sent to the site after an unprecedented flood shut down the event on its opening day.

There is also the whole “tech bros are ruining Burning Man” meme dividing the community right now, which is easy to imagine stirring the rebellious juices of (say) Cacophony Society Merry pranksters. Indeed the whole theme of “Carnival of Mirrors” this year seems designed to facilitate pranking. And let’s not forget about the Synergy Strike Force, the Merry Prankster Burners who hacked the Afghan war, or the Burner who took over a military satellite so he could watch Katrina hit New Orleans from the Playa.

SYNERGY STRIKE FORCE BM LOGO

Voices of Burning Man isn’t doing anything to quash the Bugpocalypse conspiracy theories. If anything, they are deliberating trying to make the situation more confusing. They have now released their FOURTH post on Bugpocalypse in less than a week. The language is so filled with propaganda and misinformation, it makes it impossible to understand what they are saying. Which probably was the idea.

evidently the insects have run their course. At least that is the official story. The billion wood-boring beetles that descended on the Man’s legs at Man Base have evidently been exterminated. Burning Man will not be brought to you by Citronella and DEET  this year. Behind us are the horrific fear-saturated nights of swarming green beetles, clouds of fluttering moths, biting flying ants, stinging noseeums and locusts so thick we had to don Hazmat suits and run in sheer terror from container to container to avoid being eaten alive.  No more do colonies of bats descend from the sky so thick that they obscure the moon and the hordes of kangaroo rats, ravens, crows, scorpions, snakes and coyotes have also moved on

BREAKING: Bugpocalypse Declared Over

2015 bugs pinkBy now you have probably heard about the bug plague infestation brief and insignificant appearance.

The latest update from the Playa: “Bugs? What bugs?”

The bugs are gone.

Ok, not every last stinking one of them, but pretty much. The swarms have dried up and blown away. People are working unmolested. Nature has run its course.

Yes, it was true, unknown bugs of mysterious origin showed up by the thousands or millions in Black Rock City over the past week, but the heat and the dryness have taken their toll. Larger insects came along, too, and there were plenty of smaller bugs for them to eat. Yesterday morning, we saw a small flock of birds down by the Depot, no doubt drawn to the area by the plentiful insect diet.

Please, though: The birds were not massing in Hitchcock-ian numbers. They did not line the trash fence, nor did they swoop and dive on us as we entered the commissary.

I’m sure many Burners will be relieved. But should we believe John Curley? Because a couple of days ago, the Voices of Burning Man was saying he does not officially speak for them.

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In the three and a half years I have been writing this blog, I am used to reporting on wild exaggerations made at BurningMan.com and parroted around the world without thought by the mainstream media. Our usual response is to provide evidence of the truth, which then draws out the online borg army to character assassinate us for lies half-truths sensationalized headlines.

This story is the reverse. On Wednesday, we had a live update from the Playa, complete with photos, on burningman.com. This story was picked up by media all over the world. Burning Man’s corporate communications team had to intervene to downplay the situation. And then the original author himself has come out to say that the drama’s over.

Was this all just an epic troll? Part of the Carnival of Smoke and Mirrors, tricking the suckers and chumps and rubes?

If so I tip my hat to Mr Curley. Nice job sir.

So far the coverage has included

Fox News – Bugs Swarm the Site of Upcoming Burning Man Festival

Medium – They Stink! They Bite!

Weather.com – Burning Man Festival Site is Swarming With Bug
ABC News – Burning Man Festival Infested With Large, Biting Insects

NBC News – Burning Man Festival 2015 – Swarms of Bugs Infest Site

Re/Code – Hey Techies, Burning Man 2015 Is Buggy. Execpt It’s The Creepy, Crawly Kind

NY Daily News – Burning Man’s Makeshift City Has a Big Bug Problem – “They’re Everywhere”

Business Insider – Multiple, Smelly Bugs Have Infested Burning Man

Mashable – Everyone Chill Out About The Bugs At Burning Man

EcoWatch  – The Great Burning Man Plague of 2015

Gawker – Burning Man Is Infested With Horrible Bugs

I believe in the power of an almighty God who is both just and terrible in his wrath: America’s least favorite gathering of startup dorks on MDMA is swarming with a plague of nightmarish, biting bugs.

Gizmodo – We’ve Identified Those Bugs At Burning Man, And It’s Not Pretty [Update]

Huffington Post – Burning Man Is Infested By Tiny, Desert-Resistant Bugs

SFWeekly – Burning Man Is Infested With Bugs

SFist – Plague of Biting Green Bugs to Ruin Burning Man

WIRED – Here’s How Burners Can Prepare for the Bugpocalypse

New York Post – Mysterious Bugs Overrun Popular Techie Festival

Daily Mail – Burning Man Festival Infested With Huge Biting Bugs

Tech Times – Burning Man Bugs Stink And Bite: What Are They?

Vanity Fair – Biblical Wave of Bugs Takes Over Burning Man Site

LA Weekly – Creepy Bugs Infest Burning Man

Reno Gazette-Journal – Burning Man Bug Problem Is Dying Down, Maybe

Here’s what kicked it all off, a post on August 18 at burningman.com on the Voices of Burning Man blog:

You may have seen the bug rumors on the internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you …

We don’t know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you’re likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things. They’ve blown up inches deep against the sides of the Commissary tent. They’ve covered the carpets at the Depot. They’re all over the Man Base. So it’s not a localized occurrence, it’s everywhere.

Then on August 20 BMOrg released the official statement (emphasis ours):

If you’ve been keeping up on the latest rumors flying around the internet, people are in a bit of a frenzy about an alleged bug infestation of plague-level proportions on the Black Rock Desert this year. We understand the eagerness to swarm around this click-worthy story, as the media most certainly has. We’re here to dispel the rumors (bless you, internet), provide some facts, and hopefully calm some nerves.

So are there bugs in Black Rock City? Yes. Due to unseasonably wet weather, the grass on the hills is unusually verdant, and that’s resulted in more bugs showing up in the desert than usual. There are green beetles called stink bugs (so-called because they emit a coriander-like odor when disturbed), mosquitos, and gnat-like seed bugs called Nysius. One entomologist reports that they might be causing skin irritations not because they’re biting, but because they’ve likely been eating mustard seed, which has been proliferating in the region recently, and the mustard oil irritates the skin when the bugs are smashed.

But despite the rampant rumors, these bugs are more of a mild nuisance than a full-blown infestation that should cause any major concern with Burning Man participants.

We’re hoping that continuing hot weather and a huge swarm of Burners descending upon their Black Rock Desert home sends them packing before long, but we can’t say for sure that’ll happen.

And then the next day: “no no no, there aren’t any bugs”.

Curley took time out to criticize the media for not obeying BMOrg’s rules:

Most of the outlets used quotes just plain lifted from the blog. This was supplemented with Twitter posts and pictures. There was little, if any, additional reporting. Most of the outlets also used the photos we posted here, without asking permission (those that did ask were denied, according to Communications Director Megan Miller). By the way, the photos are copyrighted, with rights jointly held by me and the Burning Man organization.

We’d be assembling a legal team if we didn’t already know that the normal and customary fees for what would likely be called “freelance submissions” range all the way from nothing to about fifty or a hundred bucks. You don’t get the big money doing journalism.

So what the hell. It’s fine. It was a good story and lots of fun, even if it did throw a scare into people. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.

They object to the journalists not contacting them to do additional reporting, while at the same time admit that if the journalists DID contact them, permission would have been denied. Most of the stories linked above used images from Twitter, it’s not clear how BMOrg can stake an ownership claim on those.

West Nile virus was detected in mosquito traps in Gerlach last year, and has been detected in both Washoe and Pershing County in the last couple of weeks. Whatever the story of the day is coming from Voices of Burning Man about these bugs, I think you should be prepared just in case. In Australia we use these:

camo coil mosquito hat

The Bugpocalypse drew an amusing response from the Burner community.

bug inclusion

bill breithaupt bugs

bugs not drugs

when i feel a bug on me
bugpocalypse

burner bugs