Tag Archives: radical inclusion

Jan 12 2021

Toxic #Wokeness and the Ten Principles

It seems some Social Justice Warriors have been riled up on Twitter today. The thread got a bit jumbled up so I’m recreating it here.

Neither of these tweets seems particularly partisan. Both are good questions, but some people seem to be triggered – perhaps because one side of politics doesn’t have good answers.

My response was simple and to the point, referencing The Tin Principles. Sadly, this seemed to only fan the flames of the fans of flames even more:

Here’s the official description of the “Civic Responsibility” Principle:

Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

It’s hard to see how this blog violates this principle in any way. We value civil society here, not a single political party or monoculture. We’re not organizing any events and we’re certainly not breaking any local, state, Federal or international laws.

“I hope you’re ostracized [for having different views to me]” and “GTFO” do not seem to fit the idea of “Radical Inclusion”. Are heterosexual white males no longer welcome at Burning Man?

Unfortunately for Cynthia, Burning Man is still predominantly white, male, and heterosexual.

The most recent Census data from 2019 shows that Burning Man is still 76% white and 1% black; 56% male and 42% female, and 66% heterosexual:

Source: Black Rock City Census 2019

It seems not much has changed demographically since Larry Harvey’s infamous 2015 statement that “black folks don’t like to camp”:

“Steve in Real Life”, who moved from the Bay Area to Reno in 1992, started out strong. Burning Man indeed has a proud history of assholery.

Unfortunately Steve got twiggered by a couple of retweets and decided to throw all the Principles of Burning Man out the window, insult us then block us while joining the call for this blog to be de-platformed:

Summer Burkes then chose to weigh in. She seems to have forgotten her previous work celebrating the gun-toting, Second Amendment loving cowboy history of Burning Man.

Here’s Summer in 2014, misspelling the name of the man she’s glorifying:

Fight Club is a book written in 1996 and then turned into a movie released 15 years ago this fall (we won’t provide any spoilers if we can help it). Author Chuck Pahlaniuk confirmed at several book-release events last year the “Project Mayhem” group in Fight Club’s story is indeed the Cacophony Society in real life … a wackier bunch of people, without the men-only Iron John subplot or all the property destruction and violence. (Well, serious violence, anyway.)

Source: Summer Burkes, burningman.org

Chuck Palahniuk proudly takes credit for the modern use of the term “snowflake”, and has been called a “darling of the alt-right and AntiFa”.

Source: Medium

Chuck believes in Radical Self-Expression and Radical Inclusion, unlike Summer:

Source: Medium

The word “heck” is clearly too controversial for Snowflake Summer to say, while calling for the silencing of different viewpoints is completely compatible with her tone of moral superiority:

I have always been quite clear to state that this blog has nothing to do with the Burning Man organization in any way.

Mere minutes before that tweet Summer had quite the potty mouth:

Her plan now is complete de-platforming of any voice she doesn’t agree with. No Radical Self-Expression, Radical Inclusion, Gifting, or Communal Effort for Summer! Will she be successful, or is there still a First Amendment in the Default World?

How does Summer reconcile her cult-like “literal worship” of Larry Harvey with his statements that Burning Man is the poster child for old-fashioned, Main Street Republicanism?

Source: Washington Post, via archive.org

Or what about Larry’s friendship with Republican strategist Grover Norquist, who on Burn Night proudly wore his Russian military uniform (allegedly obtained from shadowy ops arming the Taliban in Afghanistan)?

Grover got his freak on in classic Soviet Military Uniform

I have long advocated here that politics and Burning Man don’t mix, but it seems the Org has a different view, inviting Denis Kucinich to give the Keynote address at the 2015 Global Leadership summit:

2015 was a big year for politics invading the Playa:

We’ll let the late Larry Harvey have the last word:

Source: Washington Post, via archive.org

Can’t we all just get along? I thought that was the entire point of Burning Man.

Source: burningman.org
Apr 11 2017

Radical Inclusion Party Foul

A guest post by Mayor of the Techno Ghetto Terbo Ted TerboLizard, the founder of doof at Burning Man. Ever wonder why there are thousands of massively popular raves in the world, and yet the Cacophony Society didn’t really grow beyond a few groups of a couple of hundred weirdos? In 2017 They are still promoting the idea that we should glorify the Cock’o’phonies while demonizing the ravers, which shows how out of touch the Burning Man Organization has become from the community that creates the $40 million cash cow/ party arts festival for them for free every year. It’s tax-free for them, but Burners still pay a 9% tax on their tickets. And bring the food, the bars, the music, the DJs, the art cars, and so on.

How many people at Burning Man like the music coming from the art cars and big camps? Half? More than half? Personally I would say 95%+, YMMV. If you didn’t like that sort of music, Burning Man would be an oddly uncomfortable place to spend a week’s vacation time.

Count the crowds, and look where they are. A lot of crowds, all over the Playa, almost always around music, they always make sure to use the best speakers, you can get more Info about them on soundmoz.com. It is clear that electronic music is what made Burning Man so popular, and if the Ten Principles mean anything at all, it means we should welcome people who come to enjoy that aspect of Burner culture at least as much as we welcome anyone else. Not try to shun and shame those who made Burning Man what it is, out of some weird ideal of “what a Burner should be” – presumably some sort of submissive, compliant, social justice virtue signalling volunteer freak. Burning Man was HUGE before the Ten Principles were thought up.

BURNERBITCH

Image: Leila Moussaoui, The Bold Italic

Burning Man: Radical Inclusion Party Foul

TERBO TED TERBOLIZARD·TUESDAY, 11 APRIL 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Anyone who follows Burningman culture year-round probably stumbled across a recent article titled “Burning Man’s Culture Is In Danger – Tales from the Global Leadership Conference.” The wildly popular article at burn.life prominently featured a picture of ne’er do well young party bros in unfortunate festival attire, with the caption “Ultimately, the worst case scenario is that we end up with an event dominated by idiots like this (not sure where this was taken or who took it, but it’s not at BM….yet.) they all used Houston limo service  or other Luxury bus transportation to get to the party”

photo from http://www.burn.life
You can read the article yourself.
Before I get into any more details, I am going to both embarrass myself and brag a little bit… here is a picture of me, as a young man in my early twenties, out on the playa in 1992, right after I played THE first DJ set EVER at Burning Man.

Terbo Ted at Burning Man, 1992, Black Rock Desert, Nevada
That’s what I wore for my set. Note the visual similarities in how myself and the four young men are dressed; literally, I could stand next to these fellas being portrayed as ‘bad guys’ 25 years into the future and fit right in.
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But let’s look at the history of Burningman. When the collectives I associated with brought rave culture out there- electronic dance music- whatever you want to call it, many of the early burners treated us like pariahs. ‘Ravers’ were blamed for just about anything that went wrong in early 90s burns, and some of it was deserved, and some of it wasn’t. But there were three key BM organizers in the early years on the playa who were the glue that made Burningman stick. Larry Harvey, Michael Mikel (aka Danger Ranger) and John Law were all very supportive of our efforts to bring a new facet of culture into the Burningman experience. Those three understood the concept of radical inclusion well before that was even a stated principle of the event. The written ten principles came to the playa much later than the DJ sound systems. Today there are all kinds of arguments going back and forth regarding the virtues or failures of the music culture at Burningman, that’s another discussion for another time.
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Let’s look at the attire everyone is so scared of. When I was in my early 20s I was living on something like $500 a month or less in San Francisco. That is impossible now but it wasn’t really possible then either. I had no money for fancy clothes. The neon hat I had was a free giveaway from the liquor store, it had a cigarette brand sponsor. I used to smoke cigarettes back then. I used to go over to Larry’s house for coffee and talk about plans for the upcoming MAN year-round. At times I would take two packs of cigarettes (buy-one-get-one free quality you understand) and give one of the packs to Larry, who also was living on next to nothing as far as money goes. The shirt I had on in this picture was something you’d get out of a free pile somewhere outside of a thrift store, or for a dollar at a garage sale (they used to have those in the Mission, believe it or not). That was how we lived. If you had told me back then that people would be expected to wear elaborately hand made outfits that cost thousands of dollars to the burn I would not have believed you, now people wear all kind of stuff and buy their outfits in stores as sheepskintown.com. If I had any costume at all for Burningman back then, it was because I got it for free somehow.
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Let’s apply that to the ‘party goons’ in this picture. I was able to easily find those garments they’re wearing online. The neon green RAGE hats are $10, you can buy them online here. The shirts with garish slogans are also in the $10-$20 range. The point I’m getting to is that young people don’t have lots of excess money, and you’re going to see these sorts of fun and low-cost things being worn. The young kids don’t have $800 for a handmade steampunk top hat with hand distressed goggles sewn in, and the entire outfit that goes with it, do you understand?
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And let’s decode the messaging in their attire:
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RAGE. Hey, it’s kinda close to BURN. Party on.
ALL I DO IS FUCK & PARTY. I think many people at least fantasize that’s what their burn is going to be about, if not in fact acting it out for real. I know that I do those things out there (when not busy MOOPing of course). I’m hoping you get to do those things out there as well, if you choose to.
SHOW ME YOUR TITS. This is absolutely perfect male attire on Thursday afternoon for Critical Tits Bike Ride. I am going to order one for myself this year. Easy to find online in multiple colors and fonts and at low cost!
PARTY WITH SLUTS & ME GUSTA WHORES Burningman does take place in Nevada. Not Berkeley. Prostitution is legal in Nevada.
LET’S GET FUCKING WEIRD. Heck, this could be an official theme for one of the coming Burns for all I care. I approve.
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After twenty-five years of watching Burningman grow from less than 1000 people to selling out tens of thousands of tickets in half an hour, I’ve seen it go through many growing pains and phases, some of which were gut wrenchingly awful, some of which were transformative in a beautiful way.
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When we were first going out there, I remember Larry explaining to me that when you put yourself into that void out there on the playa, whatever it is that is you- your inner self- is going to emerge because there’s nothing else there as a reference point. Everything you do out there is your inner self projecting itself into the world. The experience there is real. Something like that. The concept of Radical Self Expression undoubtably rose out of these beliefs.
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Today, I can’t help but cringe at all of the Burner fashion conformity that happens. You can find websites in China selling ‘Burner’ style goggles now. And you know the look I’m talking about, the ‘Mad Max Muppet Pirate Clown on Acid’ get-up or whatever it is you see tens of thousands of times out there. We didn’t have a dress code at early Burningmans (although that’s not true, there were cocktail parties and theme parties with dress codes out there as early as I can remember). It’s great that the culture has developed some sort of visual ontology- maybe- but that we’ve seen that culture start to move toward exclusion of chosen costumes is a step in the wrong direction, a step away from inclusion, away from expression, it’s a push toward conformity and rule following. Early Burningmans were populated and created by pranksters, they pushed the boundaries of what was socially acceptable, comfortable, or- in many instances- lawful. They weren’t conforming to anything. Unlike today’s Burner culture. Shame on you people.
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After the burn.life article was getting heavily forwarded around social media I had started making light hearted and favorable comments about the photo with the party bros on the Facebook group called ‘Official Unofficial Burning Man Page’ or whatever it is. I posted links where you could buy RAGE hats or some of the shirts in the comment threads, jokingly (and not for profit or anything like that, not as a commodity) as a commentary. And one of the admins banned me from the Facebook group. Shame on you people.
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And let’s pretend those four party bros are out there this year in their chosen attire everyone wants to make fun of. Neon RAGE party hats and all. Having them time of their lives. Maybe they’ll even have some Whip-Its™ to share at sunrise, and you could do some with them and teach them about MOOP in the process. Remember, virgins are very welcome at Burningman. And once virgins get exposed to the culture, they can’t be unexposed to it. Who knows what great new and heretofore unthunk inspirations from the playa might transform those young bros’ lives. Hopefully they wouldn’t instead get forced down a path of derisive hierarchical conformity from the experience of going out there. The default world does that well enough, thank you.
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About the storyteller:
Terbo Ted first visited the Black Rock Desert in 1992 when there was no gate, no perimeter, no road, no trash fence and you could drive your car as fast as you wanted in any direction. Terbo was the first DJ to play in Black Rock City, with no one there to hear his set on a dusty Friday afternoon. Later, in the early years he was the only one ever to be called “Mayor of the Techno Ghetto.” His playa self and default world self can be remarkably similar these days.
Aug 4 2016

Don’t Sneak In! 2016

anonymous fire

We just received this tip-off from Anonymous Burner:

from private gate FB group where people sneaking in to burning man are being discussed:

Gate are really gunning for people trying to sneak in this year, they are using military grade FLIR and have orders to search all boxes even ones they have to unbolt, plus the LEOs will be on hand to charge any attempts with trespassing and an automatic trip to the Reno jail for a minimum 36 hour stay for EVERY occupant of the vehicle.

There is no way to verify this, so take it for what it is: a rumor. One that sounds pretty credible, given Burning Man’s recent evolution into a very sophisticated police state.

FLIR is Forward Looking Infra-Red. These systems are not just for night vision; they can look within your vehicle to identify bodies. FLIR technology can also be used to identify drugs from their thermal signature.

Last year it came out that more than 50 police departments are using radar to look inside peoples’ homes. The systems can detect the tiny movement of a person breathing, through walls.

Burning Man has for a long time used marine radar to identify people trying to sneak in over the trash fence.

How did Burning Man get access to military technology? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

We covered people sneaking past the Gate in 2014. The threat that every person in the vehicle gets 36 hours jail if they’re harboring someone without a ticket is something I haven’t heard before. Burning Man Gate have the power to lock people up without charges or evidence of a crime? Wow.

Image: Hivemind

Image: Black Magic Hivemind

 

Screenshot 2016-08-04 21.34.12

An All-Seeing Eye at Center Camp is constantly scanning Burning Man, and miles of land around it.