Making Sense of the Non-Census [Update]

There’s something strange in our neighborhood. The Black Rock City Census has morphed beyond a mildly useful planning tool, into a full-scale weapon of social engineering.

The big question is, WHY?

This week I went on the UnSpun show to discuss some of the High Weirdness of this year’s Census.

The Census dates back to the land of Babylon, home of the tower of Babel. The first one we know about was conducted by Nimrod.

The census is older than the Chinese, Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilisations, dating back to the Babylonians in 4000 BC who used a census as an essential guide to how much food they needed to find for each member of the population. Evidence suggests that they noted census records on clay tiles – an example is held by the British Museum….

The Romans conducted censuses every five years, calling upon every man and his family to return to his place of birth to be counted in order to keep track of the population. Historians believe that it was started by the Roman king Servius Tullius in the 6th century BC, when the number of arms-bearing citizens was counted at 80,000. The census played a crucial role in the administration of the peoples of an expanding Roman Empire, and was used to determine taxes. It provided a register of citizens and their property from which their duties and privileges could be listed.

[Source]

The Daily Telegraph tells us what the point of all this was:

IN Babylon in about 3800BC a team of men headed out to tally up the numbers of men, women, children, livestock, slaves, butter, milk, honey and vegetables in the kingdom. The primary reason was to figure out how much food was needed to feed the population, but the figures also gave an idea of how many men were available for military service and how much they could be taxed without starving them.

[Source]

Maximization of taxation. Well, the Burning Man Census has always asked “how much money do you make” – and ticket prices have gone up accordingly. The decision to split ticket prices into “pay more if you can afford it” and “Early Bird discount” tiers was made after the first Black Rock City Census, in 2001. The prices have been steadily climbing ever since.

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As Burning Man grew, so did the questions in the Census (here’s the 2015 results, 32 pages). At first, it was the usual stuff – where do you live, how much do you make. Later questions seemed strange given Burning Man’s principle of Radical Inclusion: are you religious, are you LGBT – what difference does that make? Surely if you can be accepted without prejudice anywhere, it’s Burning Man. Why bother asking? It’s 2016, we’re well into the 21st century, do people even care about this stuff any more?

Well, people at BMorg certainly seem to. Things have been taken to a new level this year, and it is obvious that the so-called “Census” is not being used to gather information to make the party better for Burners.

This year’s Census takes 30-45 minutes to complete. It is mostly multi-choice answers, but with “conditional” choices – if you choose some options, then hidden questions are revealed to you. For example, if you say you live in Canada, a box pops up asking for your Zip Code. If you say you are eligible to vote in the US, you get a string of questions about which elections you voted in and what your party is.

Straight away, this makes the data in this sample completely different from any paper Census done on-Playa. Why not just ask all Burners the same simple questions? Surely that would give more useful information?

The main Census is being conducted by Dr Dominic Beaulieu-Prévost, Playa name “Hunter”. He is a Professor of Sexology at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) – about as far from Black Rock City as you can get and still be on the North American continent. One section has additional questions from the “Burning Geeks”. When you get to the end, it asks you if you would like to help the Burning Geeks out further. If you say YES, you are taken to another survey, this one conducted by Oxford University, Maid Marian’s alma mater.

Scientists on the other side of the world are also studying Burners. For what purpose?

The questions themselves give an indication that this is not at all about a Live Entertainment event, a week long arts festival, or even an experimental city. This is about Social Engineering and psychological profiling.

The surveys claim to be anonymous, but you should be aware that they at least have your IP address. If you have ever posted anything at EPlaya or the BJ, created a Burner Profile, or sent an email to the Org (perhaps to sign up for Jack Rabbit Speaks) this information could be used to identify you. They may also be able to get your email address, computer name or phone number from browser cookies. The Oxford survey specifically asks for your email address at the end, and although it says “the information you provide is completely confidential” there is no actual definition of what that means, or who the information gets shared with. It appears to be people from multiple Universities around the world who have signed their confidentiality agreement.

I’m not going to go through all the questions of both Censuses, a 90-minute odyssey. I will just highlight a few questions that we will specifically talk about here, for non-profit educational purposes.

Take the Census here – you can see all the questions without submitting it.

[Update 10/2/16 6:21pm] In the interests of readibility, I have moved the question analysis to the end of the post]


 

What is Being Collected?

The way these questions are worded and the use of terms either entirely made up, or used by a mere fraction of society, seems designed to skew the Census results. Those who can be bothered going all the way through to the end, writing at length about what The Principles mean to them, become the new demographic face of Burning Man.

If they are not gathering useful information that accurately represents the population, then what, exactly, are They gathering? And for whom?

We should assume that the data includes an IP address. Even if the Quebec and Oxford surveys are not specifically linked with a cookie or token, this information is enough to connect the two submissions. From the IP address they can find out where you are, sometimes with frightening accuracy. Anyone who gets this data – which surely must include BMorg – knows this:

  • your email address
  • camp address
  • the initials of 20 of your friends
  • how close you are to those friends
  • your annual income
  • how many people in your household, and their income
  • your race, and how you feel about it
  • your religion
  • your sexuality – a great deal about it, unless like 97.7% of the US population you are heterosexual
  • if you swing
  • how many countries you have been to
  • what languages you speak
  • how you make moral judgements
  • how you make decisions
  • what effects you emotionally

Although I am not an expert on statistics, I have read a book or two about history. I feel confident saying that there has never been any Census in the last 6000+ years that has gathered such information on its citizens.

How does Black Rock City get better if I am a Two-Spirit Genderqueer who hides my feelings when I’m hostile? Shouldn’t Radical Inclusion mean these things are irrelevant to someone’s participation? This so-called Census makes it seem that these, and having a “transformational experience” that alters your personality, are in fact very important at Burning Man. If they’re not important to you, don’t go.

Who Gets This Information?

I think it would be safe to assume that in addition to the two main Universities, the Burning Man Project gets the data from these two quizzes. In fact, the fine print to the official (Quebec) Census says the Burning Man Project uses this data in planning the event and interacting with authorities from the Federal government and the State of Nevada. The data is individually numbered and coded, shared with “research assistants and collaborators” who have signed a confidentiality agreement, and kept indefinitely.

One section of the survey is by the “Burning Nerds”. This group of academics who study Burning Man was formed in 2010 at Ashram Galactica, the camp of Burning Man Project board member Mercedes Martinez and her husband, former Project director Chris Weitz (whose dad was in the OSS, precursor to the CIA). They’re still operating out of Ashram Galactica, this year’s events were:

  • Sex on the Playa!  (Tuesday, Aug. 30, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.) – The psychology and data sets of sex, sexual communities, and sexual risk at Burning Man.
  • Transformative Experiences! (Wednesday, August 31st, 1:00. – 2:00 p.m.) – The Psychology and Philosophy of transformative experiences at Burning Man.
  • Diversity on the Playa! (Thursday, September 1st, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.) – Hear the latest in quantitative data and qualitative analysis from the Census team about diversity in Black Rock City.
  • Data Release Party! (Friday, September 2, 2:30 -3:30 p.m.)  – Be the first to hear about the results of BRC Census’ 2016 Random Sampling, and ask questions.

[Source]

Despite the workshop commentary, there were no questions about sexual risk in the 2016 Census.

So does anyone in the Burning Nerds get to see the raw data? Or are there only a certain few? Who decides? What about the Org? Can the IT people access the databases? Larry Harvey? Bear Kittay? What about students at the California Institute for Integral Studies doing the 3-unit course “Art and Survival: Radical Creation at Burning Man” – are they part of the Burning Nerds?

Earlier this year the Burning Nerds gave their first report about The Transformation Project:

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Note the distortion in the presentation of this data: “I did not have a transformational experience” is not even shown on this chart.

The BJ post accompanying this chart revealed the identity of just some of the players behind this:

Molly Crockett is an Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford studying the psychology and neurobiology of altruism and morality. Find out more at her lab website.

S. Megan Heller (playa name: Countess) is a psychological anthropologist studying adult play and transformation at Burning Man, and particularly the role of play in healthy adult development and mental well being. She is a researcher working at the UCLA Center for Health Services and Society. Find out more at her website.

Kateri McRae (playa name: Variance) is an affective scientist who is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Denver. She studies emotion regulation and other emotion cognition interactions using self-report, psychophysiology and functional neuroimaging. Find out more at her lab website.

Daniel Yudkin is a doctoral candidate in Social Psychology at New York University and a jazz musician. He is fascinated by all topics related to human behavior, including how people compare themselves to others, explore new spaces, and make moral decisions. Find out more at his website.

Annayah Prosser is the Lab Manager for the Crockett Lab at the University of Oxford, and a third year undergraduate student studying Psychology at the University of Bath.

Alek Chakroff is an experimental psychologist studying moral judgment and behavior using methods from social psychology, behavioral economics, and cognitive neuroscience. See more at his research website.

UCLA, Oxford, Bath, NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, Notre Dame and the Universities of Denver and Quebec might seem like quite a few groups around the world with a keen interest in Burners. Our 2012 story on the Burning Nerds adds Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Essex, Florida, Victoria, and Royal Roads to the list of Universities behind the Black Rock Census.

And this is just a fraction of the academic studies related to Burning Man:

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There’s more detail about academics on the official web site.

We have been going down this path for a while. In 2013, “Psypost” brought us a story about how the University of Denver studied 16,227 Burners over 4 years:

I think the most striking thing that this study demonstrates is that emotion regulation can change due to sociocultural context far more quickly than previously reported,” Kateri McRae of the University of Denver, the lead author, told PsyPost. “Most previous research focuses on culture as defined by long-standing shared values and norms (and compare groups like those living on mainland China to those living in the U.S.), and the fact that we see similar changes when people attend an event for a week is very cool.”

“To me, that indicates that how we regulate our emotions in accordance with social norms is a very dynamic process. Another way to think about it is that ‘culture’ might be something that is much more local and changeable than we previously thought…

So the paradox of Burning Man is that people are more open, less inhibited when expressing their emotions, but also more thoughtful in terms of reframing, reconsidering or reevaluating their emotions (which is what reappraisal entails).

Read the full paper from the Journal of Frontiers in Psychology.

Hello! Earth to Academics! THESE PEOPLE ARE ON DRUGS. If you do not disclose or even consider that then your study is completely worthless scientifically.

“All these young people took Molly at a rave. Then they reported feeling more positive, with a heightened sense of emotion. Therefore, that was caused by the rave”

picard-got-to-be-kidding

 

And speaking of Molly…meet Dr Molly Crockett, who received a grant from the Templeton Foundation to study Burning Man.

Would love to see what this gal looks like in her Playawear – if she’s even a Burner, that is. This is not just some Oxford undergraduate working on a quirky thesis, she has a whole lab named after her and a team of assistants.

Follow The Money

One of the maxims in shadow history research is “follow the money”. So who’s paying for all this? And how much?

The Templeton Foundation has awarded Dr. Molly Crockett a two-year grant to investigate the topic ‘Transformative Prosocial Experiences’.
The project is associated with The Experience Project (the-experience-project.org), a $4.8 million, three-year initiative at the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The project explores the nature and philosophical implications of lived experiences that transform our epistemic perspectives.  Here is a decsription of the proposed research:

Can people become more generous, cooperative and kind through transformative experiences? If so, how can people pursue and achieve these experiences? This research will study in detail a natural setting commonly associated with prosocial transformation: the Burning Man festival. The project will combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the psychological mechanisms of prosocial transformations, how individuals’ expectations for transformation influence prosocial outcomes, and how people decide whether to pursue prosocial transformation. Finally, the new research will investigate what situational features are sufficient for inducing transformative prosocial experiences. Past research on prosociality suggests three key factors that may contribute to prosocial transformation: a moneyless economy; prosocial goals; and a festive atmosphere. The research team will perform a comparative analysis of events that share some, but not all, features of Burning Man, to isolate those that contribute most to transformative prosocial experiences. In doing so, this work will provide practical advice for those who desire prosocial transformation.

[Source]

The beneficiary of this research is not the participants themselves, but “those who desire prosocial transformation”…in other words, Social Engineers – and the oligarchs who employ them. That’s who wants to spend $4.8 million to figure this stuff out. Dr Crockett’s earlier studies in “experimental” psychology at Cambridge were funded by a scholarship from Bill Gates.

anglo-american-establishmentProfessor Carroll Quigley, who taught politics to Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton at Georgetown University, described how Oxford and Cambridge are used by British Intelligence for recruitment and propaganda in his book The Anglo-American Establishment.

In May this year, it was disclosed in the BJ that the 2015 Census was funded by the Templeton Foundation. The Institute for Study of Globalization and Covert Politics talks about Templeton’s ties to occult base Esalen in their article on Grass Roots Organizations, the New Left and the Liberal CIA. In his 1983 autobiography Timothy Leary said “the liberal CIA is the best mafia you can deal with”.

John Templeton Jr was the CEO of Franklin Templeton Investments, who camp with the CIA at Bohemian Grove’s most exclusive camp Mandalay, which even has its own cable car:

Mandalay    This camp is only accessible with a written permission. It is the most exclusive bunk site in the encampment and sits on a hill with a tiny cable car that carries visitors up to the compound. Many members of this camp have personal assistants with them.
Lot’s of government, Bank of America, Amoco, ChevronTexaco, Bechtel, Wackenhut, Du Pont, Rothschild Investment Trust Capital Partners plc., UBS Warburg LLC, Dillon Read & Co., German Steel Trust, Thyssen Krupp, the J.P. Morgan network, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Export-Import bank, Wells Fargo, Seafirst Bank, Manhattan Institute, the CIA, General Electric, RAND Corporation, Firestone, American Telephone and Telegraph, Atlantic Richfield Company, Johnson & Johnson, Walt Disney Company, Weyerhaeuser, Union Pacific Corp., Gannett Corp., PG&E. Corp., MITRE, McKesson Corp., ConAgra Inc., HCA Healthcare Corp., Franklin Templeton Investments which includes Fiduciary Trust, ICF Kaiser Consulting Group, Kissinger Associates, Carlyle Group, TRW Inc., Space Technology Laboratories (STL), IBM, Ford Motor Company, News Corp, BskyB (Rothschild and Murdoch governed), Daily Telegraph plc., the Economist, Caltech, Stanford University (heavily funded by Bechtel), Order of the Bath, Order of the British Empire, Order of Malta, Ditchley, Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Business Roundtable, Business Council, Committee Economic Development, Council on International Economic Policy, Trilateral Commission, Atlantic Institute for International Affairs, Pilgrims Society, 1001 Club, Le Cercle. French socialist prime minister.

[Source]

That’s your New World Order right there, folks.

John Templeton, Jr was president of the Templeton Foundation, which was founded by he and his father in 2008. They also endowed Templeton College at Oxford. John Jr passed away in 2015; he had been working for the CIA since 1962, according to his autobiography:

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Census? Or Psych Profile?

A Census is an exercise in statistics. Historically, the sample has been the entire population.

These two questionnaires are more what I would describe as “psychological profiling”. The profile created as a result of either of these surveys is extremely detailed; put both together and They may know you better than you know yourself.

There are certain psychological profiles that could be obtained from answering this strange spectrum of questions that could be very useful to certain agencies. What type of agencies? That would be speculation, but I note that if there is any involvement or interest in this data beyond the University of Quebec and Oxford,  that is being kept secret.

Timothy Leary was hailed as a hero at Burning Man last year, with Queen of Burning Man Susan Sarandon promoting Ugg boots and taking sacrament and leading an occult procession to a temple burn.

Timothy Leary at the Human Be-In, Golden Gate Park SF 1967. Image: pophistorydig

Timothy Leary at the Human Be-In, Golden Gate Park SF 1967. Image: pophistorydig

Before he was a kaftan-wearing, Playboy-posing Presidential candidate, Leary was a student at the prestigious West Point military academy and a Sergeant in the Army – he won four medals in World War 2. After he finished his degree via correspondence school, he got a PhD in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley. While working as a research psychologist at the Kaiser Foundation in Oakland, he wrote “The Leary”, which got him a promotion to Harvard and gained him the attention of Aldous Huxley. Huxley and Dr Humphry Osmond recruited Leary to be one of the main promoters for the CIA’s MKULTRA project, though they feared this ex-military guy in a suit was too straight for the job.

There were 44 Universities and colleges involved in MKULTRA experiments, most of them unwittingly. So far there are at least 33 that we know of doing research on Burning Man – and at least a dozen of those Universities appear on both lists.

What was “The Leary”?

It was a psychological profiling test, used in the entrance exams for the CIA.

So Timothy Leary, who created a psychological profiling test for the CIA, is hailed as a hero at Burning Man – the same year that a research foundation created by a long-time CIA agent gives a multi-million dollar grant to do psychological profiling tests on Burners? Things that make you go hmmmm….

Better add one more to the Coincidence Meter!

 

Can you pass the Acid Test?

 

ticket 1998

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danger ranger tweet self service cult wash your own brain


[Update 10/12/16 7:50am]

A 1963 statement by the CIA’s Inspector General shows what the real point of Personality Testing was and how it fit into “operations”:

The [Clandestine Services] case officer is first and foremost, perhaps, a practitioner of the art of assessing and exploiting human personality and motivations for ulterior purposes. The ingredients of advanced skill in this art are highly individualistic in nature, including such qualities as perceptiveness and imagination. [The PAS] seeks to enhance the case officer’s skill by bringing the methods and disciplines of psychology to bear…. The prime objectives are control, exploitation, or neutralization. These objectives are innately anti-ethical rather than therapeutic in their intent.

THE SEARCH FOR THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE by John Marks

[Source]

The Personality Assessment System (PAS) was developed by CIA psychiatrist John Gittinger.


 

Queerstion Time

The whole thing begins with what may be a Freudian slip:

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Burning Many 2016? Is this what is in their minds – many Burning Mans around the world? Or are they thinking about Burning the many deplorables who don’t pass Radical Inclusion 2.0, like frat bros and EDM fans?

Then we get to the introduction, disclaimers, and fine print.

screenshot-2016-09-29-17-27-11 It starts off by asking you if you have already done a Census online this year. This opens the door to double counting, if participants did a Census on the Playa. Towards the end, they provide a list of other ways they collect data from Burners:

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It seems that they were out promoting the Census very hard this year, trying to get everyone except DPW and the Early Entry passes – that is, the actual Burners who create Black Rock City. Burning Man employees get paid to answer these questions, which seems like a conflict of interest.

Question 1 suggests that perhaps you can fill this out as many times as you want, thus skewing the results to your own particular demographic.screenshot-2016-09-29-17-28-07

Straight away, we are into some problems. “What is your current gender?” is a separate question from “What sex was assigned to you at birth”. They are separating “sex” and “gender” as concepts, and suggesting that gender is something you can change on a whim, like a hat. Who is this that is “assigning sex at birth” to people? Professional sexologists? It sounds very transhumanist, very Brave New World.

Then – “do you consider yourself to be any of the following – check all that apply”. First of all, I don’t even know what half these things mean. What is “Two-Spirit”? The “B” in LGBT wasn’t enough?

What possible use does this information have to the people rulers of Black Rock City?

The next part of the above is “check all the years you attended the Burning Man event”. I have been to 12 Burns, 11 at Black Rock City. Do Regionals no longer count as Burns now? Or are attendees at Regionals also going to be invited to fill out these surveys? What does Baker Beach have to do with the Black Rock City census?

I note that the choices specifically exclude the earlier Wicker Man events on Ocean Beach, the Baker Beach burns described by Brian Doherty (and now denied by Mary Grauberger), and the Sausalito “Bealzabub” burns since 1979.

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Later, they get to even more questions about sexuality. It’s not enough to know if you’re Two-Spirit or Genderqueer, they need to really get to the bottom of this.

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Heterosexual or straight? WTF is the difference? Who are pansexuals screwing, that isn’t covered in Bisexual? Animals? Disgusting, but there’s nothing else I can think of that this could mean.

If you say you have a partner, then they immediately want to know if you swing. “Yes, No, It’s Complicated” wasn’t enough to cover it; they wanted to add “Somewhat” as well. So 3 of the 4 possible responses are positive indicators – this is biased, not neutral.

Next, spirituality:

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Confusing again. What’s the difference between “Agnostic” and “I don’t know”? Or between “religious” and “deist?”

What relevance does religion have under Radical Inclusion? And who came up with the idea that Flying Spaghetti Monster is a more important religion than Muslim or Hindu – which between them have 2.6 billion followers? This seems like a subtle hint to people of those faiths that they are less than welcome.

9378_-_pastafariano_al_presidio_anticlericale_milano_2_june_2012_-_foto_di_giovanni_dallorto

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They ask survey participants (who don’t have to have been to Burning Man) how Burners get their Burning Man information.

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I would love to know the totals for this question. If it’s favorable to us, it’s highly unlikely it will be shared.

You will note that “web sites” beyond the official ones are not an option, even though there is more information about Burning Man here at burners.me than anybody’s Twitter account. We just get lumped together as “Social media, Facebook, Twitter NOT managed by Burning Man”.

This is ironic, given that after Burners.Me (235,055 Likes), the next largest Burner Facebook groups all seem to have been co-opted by BMorg. BurnTheMan (82,126 ) and The Official Unofficial Burning Man Group (10,442) were infiltrated at the admin level. Groups like Pink Hearted (1,618) and Burn After Reading Magazine (3,160) have been fully assimilated by the org, and even the formerly independent Dr Yes at Burn.Life (5,614) was seduced by BMorg to get naked at the Flysalen VIP this year. Meanwhile the second largest independent Burner page Dancetronauts (98,687) have lost about 20% of their Likes and slipped back to third after a co-ordinated hate campaign. They have now been eclipsed for the #2 spot by Robot Heart (107,749). Robot Heart’s Loic La Meur was all over the Burning Man Global Leadership Conference this year, and interviewed Larry Harvey on stage in Paris in 2013. These are just camp pages, though, not sources for Burning Man news.

Then we get some bizarre questions about the Ten Principles. Pick the three you use most frequently in your every day life, and the three you find hardest – and then describe why they’re so important. You can see that only really, really dedicated Burners are going to bother to complete the survey past this point. It seemed like online multi-choice, not an exam with essays. screenshot-2016-09-29-18-10-46 screenshot-2016-09-29-18-14-05

I thought these were the “Ten Principles of Burning Man”, not the “Ten Principles to Live Your Everyday Life By”. Burning Man’s web site admits that the Principles were set up in such a way that they often actively contradict each other.

Most Burners I know – and trust me, I know a lot – couldn’t even name all ten principles, let alone be trying to live their life by them. I mean what are we, monks? We have to live in the commercial world without doing anything to make money, and give as many gifts as we can? WHY? Because we burn a wooden sculpture once a year?

What’s happened to “Burning Man is the new American holiday?” If we have to return to the default world and live by the Principles of the cult, that sounds like real life, not a holiday.

wired 1996

Then we get a rather strange scenario. How would you give $100 away, if you were BMorg? This reminds me of Stewart Brand’s “Demise Party” that created the Homebrew Comptuer Club at SLAC – see Rolling Stone’s The Last Twelve Hours of the Whole Earth Catalog. I note that “fly staff around the world to attend decompressions, regionals, TED talks and other festivals” is not one of the options, even though more of each Burners’ $100 $400 goes to that than the other categories.

screenshot-2016-09-29-18-18-22 The next set of leading questions relate to minors at Burning Man. This is in Part 2, from the Mistress of Communications

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It would be quite easy to ask “are you concerned about pedophiles at Burning Man?” – a question that many would say “yes” to, whether they had children or not. Instead, the questions seem carefully structured to bring about a desired result – like Cass Sunstein’s choice architecture. Before you are even asked if it’s safe for children, you have to acknowledge that there are families there and that people bring their kids. You are not asked for a reasoned opinion about this, merely your feeling.

If you say it is unsafe, another question appears. The dangers are “Physical Dangers” and “Psychological Dangers” – not sexual dangers, and not dangers with the police. To me this seems dangerously accommodating of the philosophy expressed by Allen Ginsberg, Temporary Autonomous Zone creator Hakim Bey, and their fellow NAMBLA members that teenage children are asking for sex and it does them good to learn about it from adults. “There’s no physical harm! There’s no psychological harm, it’s love!” Whatever dude, it’s against the law and against all standards of human decency. Burners need to distance themselves and their event from this practice, emphatically.

The issue is framed here purely about the children, and not the adults. This despite the fact that there are at least 20 Burners for every child attending. Most Burners with children do not bring them; most Burners do not have children.

The main issues for 95% of Burners are being held hostage trying to leave for hours and fed false information about an Amber Alert that was actually just a naughty 17 year old, and cops running underage stings on camps handing out free booze. If Burning Man, an event where there is a vast amount of alcohol that is all free, was a 21+ event all these problems would instantly disappear. BMorg refuses to consider that, it is just so important to them for teens to attend their event – even though it takes place during the first week of high school, so for most teens to attend they have to be truant.

Nobody should have to show ID at Burning Man. That is even more of a Default World thing than money. The majority of Burners suffer for children to be at Burning Man, and so does our international reputation. It’s a matter of when, not if, something really bad happens – a man was caught trying to kidnap a 10 year old boy this year.

If ever there was any event in the world that should be adults-only, it’s Burning Man. And if anything proves that, it’s this survey. Young children do not need to be exposed to Two Spirit Gender Queer Pansexuals. Who cares if Larry had two kids there at his first one, that’s irrelevant in 2016. Today Burning Man is internationally renowned for free drugs, free drinks, free sex, and an orgy dome. That’s not my opinion: it’s on The Simpsons. Why would any parent expose children to this? Not to mention lung-damaging dust that possibly may be contaminated from decades of life as a Navy bombing range.

At one end of the spectrum is the nuclear family, Mom and Dad and the kids all living in one dwelling, the Judeo-Christian values that built the USA and most of the world. This survey does not seem to have been created with them in mind. At the other end of this spectrum are the Satanists, Aleister Crowley and do what thou wilt, his disciple Kinsey‘s sexual experiments on children being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to destroy the building blocks of society. These are the Social Engineers, the Cultural Marixsts.

The next question about placement narrows down your profile. They ask you what street you were on, then once you answer another question pops up for the radial address. By this point they’ve also asked you if your camp was connected to the power grid or its own generator and if there was any renewable energy.

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Then they ask you if you were a “placed camp” or not. If you weren’t placed by BMorg, why did you camp where you did?

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Whatever the truth, I recommend not checking yes to “access to all night parties”…just in case this psychological profile is ever connected to your Burner profile. Never mind that Burning Man itself is an all night party, and much less happens there during the day, since it is summertime in the desert…

Then the Burning Nerds come back, for Part 3. They really want to know about your sex life too:

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Once again, these terms are undefined. What is the difference between a “swinger” and “polyamorous”? If you are happily in love in a monogamous relationship, you can’t indicate being a “Love Addict” without signalling that you could be a Sex Addict. Even the people I know who probably are sex addicts don’t go around describing themselves as such. Addiction is a psychological disorder. Love is not.

And, of course, what does any of this have to do with Burning Man? Is it a swingers’ party?

This next question is not surprising – though, again, undefined:

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But then it starts to get even more bizarre:

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Are the suggestogens working? Does attending Burning Man make you more gullible?

Are you ready for the hive mind?

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Seriously? What is this data going to be used for? “On average” – what does that even mean? Their Venn diagrams do not describe any of my relationships with other human beings. And why is it even necessary to state “human beings”? Are there other types of beings doing this Census?

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Hypothetical situations? In a Census?

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The Joker? Is this Burning Man, or Bat Man? “What character are you playing at Burning Man” – seriously? You will note that “being myself” is not an option. So much for one of the Ten Principles being “Radical Self-Expression”.

It’s not enough to say what your preferred character is. You then have to describe in detail the activities that you indulge in while pretending to be someone else:

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And then they ask:

Do you often feel drawn to playing one of these characters in your life (regardless of the struggle, cost, challenges, or unpleasantness involved in being that person)? Check the best answer.

Unpleasantness? Why would anyone at an entertainment festival choose to play an unpleasant character? If I tell a story in San Francisco, am I playing the character of a story-teller because my self-expression is somehow restricted?

Why didn’t your friends and family go to Burning Man?

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“Too many white people”? In what world is that not racism? “Too many men” is acceptable, but not “too many women”? Talk about sexist man-hating bigotry. And why isn’t there “not enough electronic music” as an option?

If you choose an option, it asks you how many of your friends and family think that way:     screenshot-2016-09-29-18-32-31 Then, when you’re done, the Burning Nerds want to hear from you – even if you’ve never been to Burning Man! What sort of Census includes people who are not there? These curious Burning Nerds are at Oxford University. screenshot-2016-09-29-18-33-24

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The screen fade is a little hypnotic. These academic “scientists” get away with things we never could in the corporate world. For example their statement “there are no risks associated with this study”. At the very least, there is a risk that the data could get hacked or leaked. There is also the risk that security settings on your computer reveal more information to the server than just the questions you’re answering.

They want some identifying information, although instead they lie to you that what you are providing is “completely” anonymous. In fact it is partially anonymous.

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It doesn’t take long for the Burning Nerds to start asking some very strange and highly personal questions:screenshot-2016-09-29-18-39-19

It goes on and on like this.

Both Oxford and Quebec seem to have an obsession with lowly-paid workers. It seems weird when just a ticket and vehicle pass to Burning Man is $500, let alone providing for yourself and gifts to others for 8 days. How do people earning less than $50k a year afford to go? Why study these people, when Burning Man 2.0 is being marketed with Billionaire’s Row? What difference does it make to Burning Man if someone earns $15,000 per year or $17,000?

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Oxford also asks the exact same questions about voting. Aside from this being a waste of everyone’s time, how is US voting relevant in any way to Canada and England?

They also have the same weird Venn diagram thing. It is interesting that the Burning Nerds don’t seem to be able to collaborate with each other.

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Now it gets really complicated. You need a degree from Oxford just to complete the frikking Census.

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Enter the initials of your friends, and how close you are to them? Hey, why don’t I just give you my Facebook login while we’re at it! Sorry Burners, but Oxford University is not telling you the truth. The initials of your closest friends is definitely not entirely anonymous information. Especially at Burning Man, where Burners have to create profiles. The more you write in the essay sections of these tests, the easier you become to identify.

unpleasent truths

It’s not just how close you are to them; it’s how much time you are prepared to spend doing favors for them.

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WTF does this have to do with Burning Man?

Are you good or bad? Could you do evil, if the ends justified the means? Oxford University wants to know.screenshot-2016-09-29-19-08-48

Oxford asks a lot about children too. There are questions about giving children money, candy, and teddy bears. Then there’s this:

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I’m sure the pedophiles think it’s very important for children to have independence, curiosity, self-reliance, and a desire to disobey and disrespect their elders. It’s hard to see how this relates to the stated mission of the Burning Man Project, or an Oxford University study on transformational festivals.

[Update 10/3/16 10:30pm] The Washington Post says these are the exact questions used to identify Trump voters by the London School of Economics and the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). I guess it’s not enough to know if Burners are Republican, and who they voted for in the previous 4 U.S. elections…Oxford and BMorg need to know if they’re deplorables too.

Oxford at least acknowledges that some of the people taking their survey may have been on drugs. But what happens in the comedown?

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Are you the type of person who hides their feelings? Maybe while playing Batman?

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If you manage to wade your way through all of that, you may be eligible for a generous prize!

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We just want your email for the raffle prize!”. We have an expression for such statements in Australia: “pig’s arse”. Which translates as a sarcastic “sure you do”.

The raffle itself is also bizarre; the benefit for giving your email address and time is ten raffle tickets to win a $50 Amazon gift card. You can keep them for yourself or gift them.

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A nice way to measure your “greed coefficient”.

. . .Are Condemned to Repeat It

by Whatsblem the Pro

A nice civilized chat -- IMAGE: Mount & Blade

A nice civilized chat — IMAGE: Mount & Blade

Ah, the sugary cloy of kool-aid.

We tend to get a lot of comments when we criticize the corporation that runs Burning Man, and our recent article calling for the Board of Directors to make good on their promise to transition the corporation to a non-profit and step down to make way for new leadership has certainly been no exception.

One commenter who calls himself “Buck Down” was quite verbose about it; I’ve chosen to answer some of his questions and comments here, in a new article, as I think the discussion is important enough to draw the attention of our readers. This isn’t the conversation as it occurred; I’m quoting Buck and giving expanded answers in greater detail.

Buck Down wrote:
I think it’s pretty funny that anyone who dares contribute anything to this conversation other than overblown indignation is instantly an “Org shill.”

The bottom line is that Burning Man has every right to allow coverage of its event as well as disallow it in some cases (see: Girls Gone Wild) – and the media has every right to ask for access. I’d like to think we’re all smart enough here to understand the nuanced difference between allowing coverage of the event vs. profiteering. Should the event have to micromanage the media even farther than they already do? What’s an acceptable overall profit margin for a news entity to be allowed to report on the event?

Whatsblem the Pro:
You think it’s funny that Org people come to Burners.me and slam us and try to discredit us in the comments? It happens all the time. Given the gigantic straw man arguments you’ve just constructed — the “overblown indignation” is exactly what we get from people leaping to the defense of the Org, not the opposite, and this isn’t about the Org allowing media coverage — I have to wonder if it’s happening again. The Org has a vested interest in countering our criticisms; on top of that, we have thousands of starry-eyed kool-aid drinkers to contend with who have drunk deeply of the propaganda the Org itself creates and spreads.

If you had actually read the article (and assuming you didn’t come here to be disingenuous about it), you wouldn’t have to be told that it has nothing to do with the Org allowing coverage or not allowing it. . . the issue is that they make large amounts of money by allowing it, yet deny burners any commercial use of their own photographs of their own art, just because it’s on the playa. This clearly puts the lie to both the decommodification principle they push on us, and to their protestations to the effect that they only want to protect us from entities like Girls Gone Wild.

You asked the question “what’s an acceptable overall profit margin for a news entity to be allowed to report on the event?” The answer is that any overall profit margin is acceptable, provided that the transaction is transparent, and that burners themselves aren’t being excluded from making similar profits.

Buck Down:
This is in fact a public event on public land, and a culturally significant, globally newsworthy event, to boot. What I think some of you may not realize is that the numerous agencies the event has to pay to allow the event to continue (ie: the BLM, as well as local and state agencies) have constantly (and in some ways arbitrarily) jacked up the price of holding the event in the Black Rock desert, while simultaneously regulating the amount of tickets that can be sold. The cost curve of these increased fees, as well as the amount of money it takes to cover the staggering cost of the infrastructure needed to stage, throw, and then completely erase this event all but insures forever that this event will barely limp into the black from year to year. rest assured – the only people stacking paper off of this event are the BLM and local law enforcement agencies.

Whatsblem the Pro:
You have definitely made some very bold assertions. If you know so much about how much they take in and how much everything costs, then perhaps you’d like to reveal all that to the rest of us, and explain why there is such a lack of transparency in Burning Man’s financials.  You seem so certain that they aren’t hiding anything, yet you claim to be nothing more than a concerned burner speaking truth to media.

Only a fool would believe that the Afterburn Reports are any kind of comprehensive, transparent accounting, and you simply asserting that we’re wrong because we don’t know to the penny how much it costs to produce the event is just obfuscatory hand-waving that seems intended to cloud the issue. We do know that ticketing revenue alone has increased by more than 600% since the year they managed to scrape up enough extra cash from ticket sales to buy 200 acres of land and build a working ranch on it. We also know that the Board has revenue streams that are far less transparent to us, like charging giant media conglomerates — excuse me, “boutique cable channels” — large undisclosed sums as site fees. They have many such hidden revenue streams; for instance: did you know that when an approved vendor rents an RV trailer to the Org so that they can house DPW personnel in it, the vendor is required to pay part of the fee back to the Org?

If the Board wants to complain that we are misjudging them when we say they pocket an unreasonable amount of money from the event for their personal gain, then all they have to do is stop pretending that the Afterburn Reports are any kind of comprehensive accounting, and start providing full transparency. The only reason not to do so is that they have money to hide.

Buck Down:
I think a lot of the noise here about the LLC “taking credit” for anyone’s work is a pretty subjective opinion that does not square with the media narrative they push. There are A LOT of artists that have seen the value of their work escalate as a result of having made big splashes at Burning Man – and many who have parlayed that fame into dollars by taking that self same work to massive commercial events such as Coachella and Insomniac throw.

Whatsblem the Pro:
As a writer, I have to say: that sounds a whole lot like offers that many artists – writers among them – get all the time: “the gig doesn’t pay, but think of the exposure you’ll get!” It’s a bullshit offer that no seasoned artist even contemplates accepting unless it’s for a friend or something. . . and you want to point to artists making money at other events as compensation for that, in the same screed in which you call for other events to start following the Burning Man model, really? What happens when every event out there is telling artists to expend their own money and labor unpaid, so the event organizers can rake in ticket money charging people to see their art? The whole thing is simply not germane to the point that the corporation that runs Burning Man is profiting mightily in both cash and reputation from the work of unpaid artists. You think the exposure is pay enough? What about the burner artists who don’t need the exposure?

As for “taking credit,” all you have to do is go to burningman.com and read what the Org themselves write about the event and their roles in it to see what I’m talking about. The language they use is very consistent in portraying the art at the event, and the culture in general, as something THEY created and continue to create and maintain. They don’t do that; burners do that, usually on their own dime and with their own labor. . . not the Org, and certainly not the Board. Tossing a tiny pittance (~3% of ticket revenue) to largely their buddies and sycophants in the form of arts grants does not give them cause to assert ownership or any creative role in providing that art, and sure the hell doesn’t give them cause to assert same about arts projects that get no funding from them, which is most of them. Grading some roads, arranging for porta-potties, and dealing with the various government agencies involved is nothing compared with the blood, sweat, and tears that go into the vast number of art pieces we get to enjoy on the playa that they have nothing to do with.

Buck Down:
While I certainly understand some people’s wish to have their very own private little club that’s their little secret – i think it’s pretty obvious that Burning Man stopped being that by the mid to late 90′s. I cannot imagine any other 60,000 person event in the world being expected by its participants to shroud itself in some sort of self imposed media blackout to all but a few blogs (or whatever the expectation is here).

Whatsblem the Pro:
Please stop with the straw man arguments. Yes, Burning Man began as what Hakim Bey called a “Temporary Autonomous Zone,” but nobody is calling for a return to that; as you’ve noted, the event is too large for that to be at all practical.

We’re also not calling for any kind of media blackout; where did you get that idea? What we’re calling for is simple: we want the Board to make good on their promises to step down, and to transition the LLC to a non-profit organization with new leadership that adequately represents contributing burners. As a partial rationale for that demand, we have cited the hypocrisy inherent in the Org brainwashing people with the principle of oh-so-sacred Decommodification while simultaneously failing to adhere to that principle themselves. Again: allowing the media in isn’t the issue there; forbidding burner artists to make money from their own work – including photographs of their own work – while raking in cash from giant media outlets in exchange for the right to do just that – is the issue, or one of the issues.

Buck Down:
If you don’t like how big Burning Man has become, and all that goes with it – PLEASE STOP GOING AND START YOUR OWN EVENT. There’s lots of folks that would love to recapture that starry eyed idealism from the days of yore – just be ready to loose an ocean of money in the process – and know everyone is still going to probably hate you in the end for “selling out.”

Whatsblem the Pro:
You can blither and bluster all day about starting our own event if we don’t like the way this one is run, but I have little patience for such talk, for several reasons. The whole idea smacks loudly of those bumper stickers you used to see on vehicles belonging to ignorant jingoist pro-war rednecks in the ’60s and ’70s, the ones that read AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. It’s wrong thinking, at its very foundation, and diametrically opposed to the ideas of civic pride, personal responsibility, and “do-ocracy” that are part and parcel of burner culture.

You clearly have no idea how strenuously the Org discourages such attempts (or do you?); maybe you should talk to Corey Rosen about his trials and travails with getting his event, the DIgital Renaissance Faire, off the ground. In fact, I’d like to invite Mr. Rosen to give us an interview specifically about the ways in which the Org has actively countered his efforts in that direction.

Fuck “start your own event.” This one is perfectly good, aside from the corporate predators running it. All it needs is some representation for all the people who actually make it what it is, and some financial transparency. If you don’t like people trying to make Burning Man better, maybe you’re the one who should go find (or start) another event.

Buck Down:
Could you please site me this epidemic of artists not able to use of photographs – because a simple Google search produces millions of pictures, and every artist I know from burning man has a Facebook page jammed full of photos of their shit, and I know that virtually NONE of them had to be run through the org for approval. . .

Whatsblem the Pro:
The Org’s rules state clearly that they have an ownership stake in all those millions of pictures you mention. We haven’t been talking about people simply posting pictures taken at Burning Man, though, as you imply; we’re talking about artists being harassed and intimidated by the Org for using the pictures they’ve taken – of their own art, even – in any sort of commercial fashion whatsoever, including the use of pictures taken at Burning Man on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other crowdfunding sites.

There’s a link in the article to a direct account of the Org interfering with someone using a picture of their own art car for a fundraiser campaign if you’d care to look. . . and I personally have experienced intimidation attempts from the Org’s legal people for daring to use the phrase “Burning Man” for a purpose that serves burners and makes no money. . . so instead of getting mired in your disingenuous comments about photos taken at Burning Man, maybe we should talk more about the transition to a non-profit, the police presence on the playa, the lack of rape kits, the tiny slice of the pie that actually funds art, financial transparency/secretive profit-taking, and the Org’s habit of co-opting the unpaid work of others for their own profit and glory.

Buck Down:
What is absolutely true is that the sort of financial purity that people on this thread demand would be the end of the event as you know it. I will concede that the organizers of the event probably brought this upon themselves by espousing all this new age anti-corporate hoo ha, but at the end of the day, the demand to keep the event going and keep pace with the amount of people who want tickets, while still finding ways to cover the costs of this expanded demand, while getting pinched by the government is what it is. Any other event and the world can just sell vendor space or get corporate partners. Burning man is not perfect, but if you compare it to every single other counter culture event – you are getting about as pure as it can be done at this scale.

Like I said, I think people need to start other, much smaller events so that they can return to this sort of purity a certain segment of our community so lustily desires.

Whatsblem the Pro:
“Financial purity,” my ass. All we’re asking for is financial transparency; that and a transition to non-profit status with an accompanying change in leadership is no more than what the Board themselves promised us. Since then, they’ve back-pedaled on stepping down. Since there are many ways for the Directors of a non-profit corporation to line their own pockets while complying with the rules regarding non-profit status, it doesn’t seem unreasonable at all to ask for transparency and representation.

Again, if you really know so much about the costs of the event and the revenue taken in, then you must be pretty high up in the Org yourself, and are probably on the Board. . . how else would you know so much about it? Since you very plainly discounted the idea that Org people come to Burners.me to slam us and try to discredit us in the comments, this makes you either a liar who does actually have that inside information, or a person who is making completely unfounded and unjustified claims regarding your knowledge of the event’s financials. Which is it?

In so very many ways that we have documented here at Burners.me over the last year, the Board has proven their incompetence, their greed, and their lack of concern for the problems that rank-and-file burners face. Your counter-arguments are weak, and derived from talking points put forth by the Org at burningman.com. Your dog won’t hunt, sir. . . and given that the transition to a non-profit is our best (and perhaps only) shot at a regime change, it is URGENT that burners start talking realistically about how to effectively demand that the Board stick to the original plan and STEP DOWN, rather than blowing smoke up our collective nethers about how much we need their supposed expertise.

[Burners.me welcomes relevant comments to this article.]

Burning Man Org to Burners: We Own You

Imageby Whatsblem the Pro

People who don’t know what Burning Man is tend to assume that it’s just another festival; a place where consumers go to enjoy passive entertainment arranged by event promoters. Burning Man’s not like that, and it never has been.

What would we have, if the only work that got done out there on the playa was what the Org either paid for or did themselves? If there were no volunteers, no independent artists or laborers or engineers or architects or visionaries or weirdos or pranksters or sex deities or bartenders? Nobody out there just doing their thing?

Attendee participation is fundamental to Burning Man, and it is what provides us with 99% of the shade, art, diversions, exposed flesh, alcohol, and other critical resources to be found in Black Rock City. Even most of what the Org provides gets built, torn down, and cleaned-up after with volunteer labor, and all of it gets paid for with money we give them. Imagine if all those burners who put all that time and money and effort into being amazing on the playa – all the people who aren’t part of the Org or paid by them – were suddenly replaced in the middle of the burn by passive attendees looking to be entertained and vended to in exchange for their ticket purchase. There would be no Burning Man. There wouldn’t even be a festival; instead, we’d have a major tragedy in an artless, corpse-littered desert wilderness: Thirsting Man. Mummifying Man. What-the-Fuck-are-You-Doing-Here Man.

In short, it’s a huge mistake to give the Org too much credit for Burning Man. Burning Man co-founder John Law understood that; back in 2007, he wrote:

Burning Man, since it’s inception has depended upon the gratis efforts of many. Since my leaving active organizing of the event in 1996, it has become a huge business generating more than 8 million dollars a year. Some people are paid quite well for their efforts. If the organizing core of the event believes, as they say quite clearly in their literature that the BM concept is a true movement, and has an opportunity to really make a difference in peoples lives and ideas around community, the arts, etc., then they shouldn’t have a problem releasing the protected trademarks Burning Man, Black Rock City, etc to the public domain where ANYONE can then BE Burning Man. Doing this will not impede their ability to manage and organize the event, sell tickets, pay themselves, and any artists, vendors and tradesmen as they choose using ticket sales receipts.

The only thing that would change is that NO ONE would be able to capitalize on “Burning Man” by licensing the name or selling it or using it as an advertising pitch. There is no other reason to retain these legal ownership titles other than to capitalize on their brand value at some later date.

I was defrauded by Larry and Michael’s actions. I hope they choose to do the right thing and give Burning Man to the people.”

John Law

John Law

Of course they didn’t give Burning Man to the people. They settled with John Law on undisclosed terms instead, and they’ve been jealously guarding the brand they officially own ever since. . . and that eight million dollars? It’s now up to over thirty million.

Yes, I said “jealously guarded,” and there’s no hyperbole in that. . . if anything, it’s an understatement. In 2009, digital civil rights watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation slammed the Org for their ticketing terms and conditions, saying “It’s bad enough that some companies routinely trot out contracts prohibiting you from criticizing them, but it’s another thing altogether when they demand that you hand over your copyrights to any criticisms, so that they can use the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to censor your own expression off the Internet.”Electronic Frontier Foundation

Having recognized that the Org may very well have good intentions behind their terms and conditions, the EFF still notes that “the collateral damage to our free speech is unacceptable.”

The Org’s defense to this is that their over-reaching and draconian measures are necessary to protect Black Rock City culture. Some would say that by ‘protect’ they must mean “reserve it for their own exploitation.” The most charitable interpretation I can make of the Org’s response to the EFF is something like “we don’t trust burners to do it themselves, and we lack the imagination to come up with a solution that isn’t a massive violation of peoples’ rights all year long, everywhere.”

The corporation that runs Burning Man is slated to become a non-profit, but this has not yet happened, and it won’t necessarily make things better, or curtail the ability of board members to skim off massive paydays for themselves. For now, the Org is still a non-transparent, for-profit corporate entity whose board members primarily serve their own interests behind closed doors. With most of their operating costs paid for out of the pockets and sweat glands of volunteers, they control tens of millions of dollars per year in ticket revenue alone. . . yet they seem to have zero respect for the people who not only give them that ticket revenue, but also literally build and painstakingly strike the event that makes it possible for them to sell tens of millions of dollars worth of tickets in the first place.

Zero respect doesn’t mean zero interest. Off-playa, the Org seems all too eager to establish and maintain a Disney-like control over every aspect of burner culture they can get their hands on, a process that effectively quashes the very freedom and can-do DIY attitude that burners thrive on and that the Org themselves love to trumpet as their greatest triumphs.

Given the amount of lip service that the Org gives to the idea of spreading the culture as widely as possible, it seems both hypocritical and graspingly self-serving to exert the kind of stranglehold that they do on ‘their’ trademark. That kind of control freakism is par for the course, though. Regionals must adhere to a strict set of policies and rules set by the Org, just to be ‘officially’ recognized as nothing more than organized groups of burners. Try to organize anything bigger than a living room sleepover while self-identifying as Burning Man enthusiasts, and you’re asking for unwelcome attention from the vultures in the Org’s legal department and their mania for protecting the Burning Man brand from the very people who give that brand its value.

The Org even has an official set of rules for online communities, and they are both dismayingly extensive and incredibly oppressive. Rudeness, vulgarity, being disrespectful, being snide, being overly-critical of the Org, or even wandering off-topic are just a small part of what is explicitly forbidden.

“They want burner-oriented Facebook groups to enforce all those rules for them. So naturally, nobody wants their group to be official,” says Michael Watkiss, an administrator of and participant in several such groups. “The official rules are just way too strict.”

The words of John Law echo in our ears: “There is no other reason to retain these legal ownership titles other than to capitalize on their brand value at some later date.” The Org’s death grip on the Burning Man trademark is a visible sign of their preparation of new revenue streams – at the culture’s expense – in order to maintain and increase the personal income of board members in the face of their imminent reconfiguration as a non-profit organization.

There are a surprising number of Burning Man groups and pages on Facebook, most of them unofficial, created and administered by volunteer burners. They range from the Org’s own heavily-moderated Facebook page to various Regional or special-interest groups, including one called “Burning Man Sucks.”

Photo by Michael Macor

Photo by Michael Macor

The administrators of these groups are, of course, unpaid volunteer burners. To one degree or another, they strive to keep their groups lively, useful, and relevant. One thing plagues them all: advertising. People show up in their groups and post ads, aka ‘spam.’

The largest Burning Man group on Facebook, with some 28,000 members, has this problem all the time. “We have to be constantly on the watch for spam,” says Watkiss. “We’re a decommodification zone, no advertising allowed. The only exceptions are for events and fundraising that directly benefit either recognized Regionals, or art projects that are destined for the playa.”

It’s easy enough for the admins to just delete the totally unrelated marketing blather that washes up in our online communities, but some of it isn’t totally unrelated, and is posted by burners themselves. Somewhere between the exceptions made by Watkiss’ group and the realm of outright corporate spam, there lies a grey zone of burner-oriented advertising by and for individual burners. Deleting a corporate sales pitch for diet lard, the latest model of Pootmobile, or low easy payments on plutonium siding for houses is trivial; deleting a fellow burner’s post in which he’s trying to sell the yurts he builds can cause friction.

“It’s often cut-and-dried,” says Watkiss, “but the grey areas are very, very grey indeed. That can really generate a lot of anger.”

Recently, a small group of volunteer administrators like Michael Watkiss put their heads together over an improved solution to the spam problem that wouldn’t shut out individual burners from making contact with each other and buying and selling things. “A guy from one of the Regional groups told us that his people opened a second Facebook group strictly for buying and selling things to each other,” Watkiss explains. “It seemed like a great idea, so we talked about starting one for burners all over the world to use. It keeps the buying and selling out of the main groups, but gives it a place to happen where we can still guard against people from outside the culture trying to market random junk to us. Decommodification is wonderful in its place, but it shouldn’t mean that burners are forbidden from ever having any commerce with each other, anywhere. This way the burners on Facebook get their burner swapmeet if they want it, without polluting the main groups with commerce.”

The charter of the new group, dubbed “Burning Man Classifieds,” reads as follows:

This group is given to the burner community as a place to freely post any appropriate advertisements we wish. Funding an art project? Tell us about it. Need a new roommate, or a job, or a car, or a rideshare, or some exotic materials for your art? Try us. Want to sell something? Give us your best pitch. You can even beg here, if you think your cause is good enough to garner donations. You can even look for a date! What you can’t post: MLM pyramid schemes/scams, obvious attempts to market to us from outside our community, and blatant trolling. Everything else is fair game; the admins will use their best judgment in sorting the wheat from the chaff.

PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU POST. This is a worldwide group of people. If you post an ad looking for a room to rent, for instance, then we need to know where you are. Not the intersection, the city and State (or Province, etc.). Try not to make extra work for the volunteer administrators, or we might assume you’re a troll.

If you administer a Burning Man related group and would like to help us out, get in touch with one of our admins so we can add you to the team.

Just a week after the new group’s inception, the Org seems to have taken notice in a big way. “Apparently, they’ve been sending thinly-veiled legal threats to one of the administrators,” says Michael Watkiss. “They don’t want the group to use the phrase ‘Burning Man’ because they say it violates their trademark.”

Trademark infringement is not so simple, though. In most cases of alleged infringement, the acid test is consumer confusion. If the defendant isn’t selling a product that consumers might think came from a different manufacturer because of the trademark, then generally speaking, no infringement has occurred. There are also protections for non-commercial use of trademarks, and for parodies.

Michael Watkiss: “I don’t understand why the Org would think they have a leg to stand on. Nobody owns the group, and nobody is making money by running the group. It’s just a place for burners to have a funky little swap meet with each other. The group itself is not a commercial enterprise, and nobody is going to confuse a Facebook group with a giant week-long arts festival in the desert. The idea that there’s some kind of trademark infringement going on that requires their legal team to swoop in is just silly.”

Holle had to change his plates from BURN BRC to BRC LUV

Holle had to change his plates from BURN BRC to BRC LUV

According to Watkiss, the Org’s legal team suggested that a name change to “Burner Classifieds” would be sufficient to call off the dogs. . . but sadly, most people – including the State – still think ‘burner’ means someone who smokes a lot of pot. “It makes it harder for our tribe – burners – to find Burning Man communities that aren’t controlled by the Org, and encourages both dilution and demonization of our communities by making outsiders think we’re all about drugs.”

Watkiss’ complaint seems to hold water.

“I ordered ‘BURNBRC’ license plates from the State of Nevada for my pickup truck,” burner Jawsh ‘Sparrow’ Holle told me. “They printed the registration that way on the spot, but then the State sent me a letter saying they wouldn’t issue the plates because the word ‘burn’ was drug-related, and I had to change my request. I asked for ‘BRC LUV’ instead.”

Trademark law protects people using phrases that can’t be adequately expressed with an alternate phrase, especially for non-commercial uses, and particularly when there’s no consumer confusion likely. The Org’s attempts to exert total control over the term “Burning Man” aren’t just contrary to everything they say about fostering community and culture, they’re also unsupported by trademark law.

“It’s all been very politely worded,” points out Watkiss, “but the implicit threat in these messages from the Org is very clear. It’s the iron hand in the velvet glove. If they can’t be in complete control, the Org wants to marginalize us. . . and we’re burners!”