It only took 3 1/2 months – and, quite probably, me spending an hour yesterday talking to a reporter from Bloomberg Business Week, then passing his details on to Caravancicle’s manager – but finally the community gets to hear things straight from the horse’s mouth. Burning Man Director Jim Tanabaum has issued this statement at caravancicle.com (re-posted at burningman.org, which is lucky because Caravancicle has now taken their whole site down):
Burning Man Project board member and Caravancicle founder Jim Tananbaum has addressed questions raised about his 2014 camp in Black Rock City.
The following was posted today on Caravancicle.com … we’re reposting it here for your convenience:
The Man himself. Image: Google+
I am writing to respond to a number of posts regarding Caravancicle, a camp of which I was a member in 2014 – I also helped envision and fund the camp.
I first want to apologize broadly to anyone who felt disrespected by our camp or concerned about the implications of our camp’s operation to the long-term health of Burning Man.
I have been attending Burning Man every year since 2009. Burning Man is a singularly impactful event for me and, since first attending, I have become deeply moved by the 10 Principles, the potential for these principles to change the world, and the environment of the playa as an embodiment of the principles. This is the reason I joined the Burning Man Board of Directors. It is also the reason why I wanted to create a camp environment that would help enable my friends to share the transformative experience of Burning Man. In addition, we wanted to introduce a more sustainable, communal and aesthetically pleasing alternative to RVs to the playa. It was always our intention to provide an open environment, which welcomed everyone and was consistent with the spirit of Burning Man. It is clear based on blog posts and comments made online that not everyone experienced what we intended.
For that, I would like to apologize. Despite our best intentions and efforts, some things did not turn out as planned.
Caravancicle is the third camp I have been involved with at Burning Man. My experience has been with larger camps requiring some workers to provide the infrastructure. Our camp was constructed by a long-term Burner with deep respect and care for the community, who was hired to manage the camp. He also led the build for the camp we did the year before. We have worked with people in the past to build out our camp who were hired by the camp organizers and then would enjoy the Burning Man experience when they were not working. Our campmates would staff the bar, greet people, give out gifts, etc. This year, our plan was to gift a neighboring camp infrastructure in exchange for their assistance in building ours. We were trying to build community through sharing resources.
To make a long and painful story short, our partners were not able to complete our build and our remaining staff was left having to build out toilets, showers and other infrastructure (without having planned to and therefore not having the proper resources to do so). During this crisis, many people in our camp rose to the occasion, but a few, like “SherpaGirl,” decided to leave and then wrote a disappointing account of her few hours in our camp. Another person in camp posted a sign asking for help without asking anyone else. We had some first time Burners in the camp, including the person who posted the sign. We also had many return Burners in the camp. I think most people attending Burning Man have had some unexpected situations; we did, and we tried to adjust to these in the moment.
The hero of this unfortunate situation was our camp’s manager who worked tirelessly for 2 days along with other camp members to help provide basic infrastructure for all of us. While the crisis was going on, all of us were greatly distracted and weren’t able to properly respond to the many people coming through our camp. Our supplies were also dwindling. Since the camp was so large, we used wristbands to help manage the food, water, and booze supply during non-public hours. It was really sad for me to read the accounts of people who visited our camp and were turned down for drinks during the day (including a number of my friends). Ughh…. If we had simply posted a sign providing details on camp gift times, it would have made a big difference.
Our camp breakdown was also compromised because the group responsible for providing the infrastructure was also responsible for part of the breakdown. In the end, our camp manager and some other members of the camp, plus breakdown staff, cleaned up our camp by Saturday after the event. We took a photo of our campsite before we left the playa and it was free of MOOP. We then learned that a camp next door was having significant issues with clean up and we sent trucks back to help them. It is unclear to me as to why we remain with some red marks on the MOOP map.
To specifically answer questions: I did not profit from Caravancicle (in fact I gifted money, as I do every year). Our bar was open to the public at night but not during the day. We should have posted a sign to make this clear. On Friday night, used up all of our booze to gift a huge party for anyone who visited our camp. We regularly gifted very yummy homemade popsicles and herbal tea but were not able to set up the gift stand in front of the camp as originally envisioned because of the build crisis we had. We regularly gifted drinks, water, and electrolytes at night.
Regarding questions on the 10 Principles of Burning Man:
1. Radical Inclusion: Burning Man welcomes people from all walks of life. Referring to Caravancicle campers or members of any other camp as “the rich people” is creating a class system within Burning Man, which I don’t believe is beneficial to the community. Our camp welcomed people from all walks of life. Sometimes we had art cars that were filled up with our camp members and would not have been safe to include others. During other parts of the days, these art cars welcomed anyone to come on board until they were filled to safe capacity.
2. Gifting: Burning Man is devoted to acts of giving. Caravancicle gifted popsicles, tea, booze, water and electrolytes, but at the beginning of the week we did not serve non-camp members drinks during the day and failed to make it clear to non-camp members that we would be offering drinks during nighttime hours to everyone. We did gift a blow out Friday party with full bar and snacks. We could have greatly improved our communications on this matter.
3. Decommodification: Our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorship, transactions, or advertising. Caravancicle was in no way affiliated with any third party sponsorships. We hired a team to produce the camp (as many camps do), but Caravancicle did not participate in any advertising. The ‘promotional materials’ and website were sent to guests who were invited to join the camp. We did not actively promote the camp. No one in Caravancicle made money off of the camp.
4. Radical Self-reliance: Although many of the more physical aspects of self-reliance were lost on the Caravanciclers, camp members were encouraged to exercise and rely on their inner resources. Just as in other camps, many members spent extensive amounts of time reflecting and self-exploring out on the playa. They faced many of the same challenges every other Burner faces at the event.
5. Radical Self-expression: Caravancicle was an act of creative expression in and of itself. The camp had months and months of planning and effort put into it, including help from many of its members. While not all members of the camp participated in the creative aspect of building the camp, each brought their own unique personality, costumes and contributions to Burning Man.
6. Communal Effort: While I can’t argue that Caravancicle members had significantly less work to do as far as cooking and maintenance, all members were still responsible for chores around camp including, but not limited to, picking up trash and being responsible for washing their own dishes. We also created a beautiful space open to the public that fostered cooperation and collaboration.
7. Civic Responsibility: Caravancicle assumed responsibility for the conduct of our events. We refused alcohol to minors and to people who didn’t have cups in order to limit MOOP. On one specific instance there were so many bikes parked outside one of our parties that the Rangers had to come inside and let us know. We killed the music and shut down the party immediately, making sure the mess was cleared up right away.
8. Leaving No Trace: Our clean up was delayed because of our co-dependency on a partner camp. We were able to clean our site, with pictures taken that document a clean site on Saturday after the event. It is unclear to me why we received red marks on the MOOP map, but I think we were generally docked points because we were late in leaving. We also sent back help for a neighbor camp that was having difficulties cleaning up.
9. Participation: Members of Caravancicle participated and achieved through “doing”. I urge everyone to remember that for some of our campers, this was their first burn. Personally, I contributed substantially less my first year than I have in years since. This year, however, I allocated vast amounts of time, effort and money to create something beautiful to share with the community.
10. Immediacy: Most Burners agree that Immediacy is the touchstone of value in our culture. Just like every other participant in this community, I wish to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves. I did not get it perfectly right, but I did make my best effort to create something beautiful and creative, unique and innovative.
Regarding other questions that have been raised about me and my camp:
Plug and Play: While a lot of personal responsibility was deflected onto camp employees, I have worked tirelessly since the beginning of the year planning, organizing and executing a camp that brought beauty and value to the playa. Although some of our campers were “plug and play” participants per se, the act of judging them or excluding them goes against everything that Burning Man stands for regarding radical inclusion.
Profit: There have been suggestions that our camp was for profit. I can assure you our camp generated no money and was not, in any way, a money making venture. Additionally, the Burning Man organization was in no way involved with the planning or production of the camp – it was an entirely personal project. Our website was meant to be viewed by 60 or so people who were planning to participate in our camp and was password protected. The material which referred to artists was produced by our partner camp and not us as a way of describing what they envisioned. Our partner camp described this as fully endorsed by the artists they included. I am sorry that people outside of Caravancicle camp were able to gain access to our website and share our draft material without our authorization. I am also sorry about artists whose names they included without their authorization. Caravancicle was trying to create an environment which shared the beauty of our architecture and design with other creative forces on the playa.
Burning Man Project Board of Directors: I joined the board of directors because I’m passionate about the impact Burning Man culture can have on the world, and because I believe my professional experience and perspective is valuable to the new nonprofit at this early stage of its development. I believe Burning Man and what it has to offer the world is still very nascent and am thrilled to be working with other board members to steward its growth and development.
I believe there is a silver lining in the discussion our camp has engendered because it has caused a healthy dialog about the implications for Burning Man’s evolution. I am proud to be a Burner. I am proud that my fellow Burners felt passionate enough about the sanctity of Burning Man to push this discussion, and I look forward to taking new ideas and lessons learned into the future.
Burners.Me:
It wasn’t his fault, see. He blames all his staff. The paid workers didn’t do a good enough job, the camp next door who he paid to build his camp for him didn’t do a good enough job, and he lost money on the whole deal. They never used any artists names in their marketing materials without permission, that was the camp next door’s fault. The MOOP? Camp next door. Although they were allowed to stay until Saturday cleaning up (not Tuesday), they got no special treatment from BMOrg. Anyone can bend the rules if they like, hey, like Larry says, they’re not rules, just an ethos.
If “Sherpagirl” hadn’t left when she did, it all would’ve worked out great.
Their camp brought “beauty and value” to the Playa.
“I allocated vast amounts of time, effort and money to create something beautiful to share with the community.”
– what, Jim? What? Please tell us what were the beautiful things that your camp shared with the community. Popsicles? The bingo?
“We refused alcohol to minors and to people who didn’t have cups in order to limit MOOP”
– right. Not because of the laws of the land, or physics.
In one breath he says
Our camp welcomed people from all walks of life…We also created a beautiful space open to the public that fostered cooperation and collaboration.
and then straight away he says:
Sometimes we had art cars that were filled up with our camp members and would not have been safe to include others….at the beginning of the week we did not serve non-camp members drinks during the day and failed to make it clear to non-camp members that we would be offering drinks during nighttime hours to everyone. We did gift a blow out Friday party with full bar and snacks
Of course, we also see the familiar “straw man” misdirection:
Referring to Caravancicle campers or members of any other camp as “the rich people” is creating a class system within Burning Man, which I don’t believe is beneficial to the community
I haven’t seen this issue being raised from any Burners in the community, actually. Just 3 of the Board of Directors now, and a couple of the shit-stirrers on the state-sanctioned forum ePlaya.
It was always our intention to provide an open environment, which welcomed everyone and was consistent with the spirit of Burning Man
Yep, they brought 70,000 wristbands. And money. They gifted us money.
MOOP #fail
It is unclear to me as to why we remain with some red marks on the MOOP map.
Actually Jim, your entire camp got yellow. That’s bad. Red is really bad.
So not even a Director of Burning Man can explain how they got their score on the MOOP map. In that case, who can? It seems that the MOOP result is rather arbitrary, possibly politically with no recourse, oversight, or explanation.
Burning Man. What is it? A rave in the desert? An arts festival? A Temporary Autonomous Zone? An experiment in new ways of living together as a community, relying on each other to survive, without the trappings and comforts of modern society? The world’s biggest occult ritual?
Or is it a giant drug- and sex- fuelled Bacchanalian orgy of debauchery?
If you ask me, it’s all of the above. But to most of the world, it’s the latter.
Recently The Simpsons, one of the world’s most popular TV shows, went to Burning Man – or, as they called it, “Blazing Guy”. One of the show’s directors, Tubatron, is a long-time Burner. Many Burners were excited to see our favorite magical event portrayed in a TV show that has been running about as long as Burning Man itself has. I remember watching the Simpsons on the Tracey Ullman show when I was a teenager, before it became its own show on Fox and part of the fabric of mainstream society. Was this part of the Burning Man Project’s mission to spread Burner culture around the world? They’d held workshops on The Ten Principles in Education, and how businesses could learn from the Ten Principles in the sharing economy. Would we now see the Ten Principles go global, on one of the world’s most famous and successful TV shows?
Sadly, no. They chose to highlight the drugs. We saw infant Maggie playing with a MOOPed syringe that she’d picked up on the ground. The main storyline of the episode was Marge being dosed with a hallucinogen without her knowledge: one of the absolute WORST things you can do to someone anywhere, and the complete opposite of what Burner culture is about. She trips off her face, gets all horny with Homer, and overall seems to have a positive experience. Most Burners are portrayed as rude, shady, ego-driven characters.
This year also saw two famous political figures attending Burning Man for the first time. Former Presidential candidate, Democrat Denis Kucinich gave interviews on the Playa, and a political speech. Tax-reformer and Republican party puppetmaster Grover Norquist gave interviews before he went, tweeted from the Playa, and then went on a PR tour to promote his involvement in Burning Man.
What did the press want to talk about? The Ten Principles? The amazing art? How Burning Man is saving the world?
We recently ran a poll asking Burners if they had ever done illegal drugs at Burning Man. I realized that if I just asked “Yes/No”, there would be many readers who had never been to the annual Nevada burn. As it turns out, about a quarter of respondents. Of those who had, 90% had done illegal drugs there.
Is Burning Man about drugs? Undoubtedly. Can you go there without taking drugs? Sure, and about 1 in 10 do – around 6000 people. To put this in perspective, 10% of Burners visited the Orgy dome. There are about as many people having a sober burn than there are indulging in a public orgy. It’s worth noting with these statistics that there are at least 4000 children at Burning Man, hopefully not doing drugs, and hopefully not visiting the orgies.
San Francisco has always been pretty tolerant of drugs. BMOrg’s founders don’t seem to care. Larry Harvey has publicly acknowledged having hallucinogenic experiences before. John Perry Barlow, who was promoted by the Org in their “The Founders Speak” event in 2013, is a very public advocate of hallucinogenic drugs – it was a fundamental part of the whole “Deadhead” scene. Michael Mikel spoke publicly about his drug use at a community event in San Mateo earlier this year, saying “we had access to stuff direct from the Stanford Chemistry Lab”. The crowd laughed approvingly.
The spectrum of illegal drugs at Burning Man runs from medical marijuana, which even if prescribed by a doctor in Nevada is illegal on the Federal land underneath Burning Man; to exotic designer drugs, which get medical papers written about them. Sasha Shulgin, the regular Burner, Berkeley chemist and Bohemian Grove sax player who passed away this year, is considered the “father of Ecstasy”, and credited with popularizing that drug in the US. He isolated more than 200 different drugs in his career, wrote many books about them, and collaborated with the DEA.
For many Burners, whether or not they actually take drugs at the event doesn’t matter. By going to Burning Man, they get tainted with the stigma. A recent Black Rock City census poll asked:
The majority of Burners never mention that they’ve been to the event in the public space. Many don’t even tell their friends and family that they go.
Their professional life is the largest category requiring secrecy.
Do people use their Playa name outside Burning Man, or do they keep it a secret?
Only about a quarter have ever used their Playa name publicly:
As you can see, the majority of Burners do not tell their Playa name to their non-burner colleagues, friends, or even family members. Why not? Because of the reputation of Burning Man: drugs, nudity, and extreme sex.
Most of the “unique” aspects of Burning Man are modelled on Bohemian Grove. Nicknames at the event, theme camps, a ban on commerce, an effigy burn, robed lamplighters, educational workshops, corporate networking opportunities. Burning Man is much closer in its nature to Bohemian Grove, than it is to any other EDM Festival. The use of nicknames at Bohemian Grove evolved because the event was started by a bunch of journalists working for Hearst newspapers, and theatrical performers from the predominantly male San Francisco of the late 19th century. The Captains of Industry who financed the thing, wanted to let loose “without Care” and without their antics being reported by the press when they got back home.
Even most of Burning Man’s 6 founders prefer to interact with the public primarily through different identities than their birth names. “Crimson Rose” is really “Nanci Peterson”. “Harley Dubois” was called “Harley Bierman” when the event began. ” Will Roger” is really “Will Peterson”. And “Danger Ranger” also goes by the unlikely moniker of “Michael Mikel”, often shortened to “M2”. This extends to their management team too: their Social Alchemist “Evan Kittay” goes by “Bear”, one guy calls himself “$teven Ra$pa”. Then we have names we recognize from the Burning Blog Voices of Burning Man, like Halcyon, Answer Girl, Caveat Magister.
“Burner Names” or “Playa Names” are a popular and accepted part of Burning Man’s culture, and have been for a long time. That’s cool, right?
Well in the early hours of yesterday morning, Burning Man founder “Danger Ranger” decided to publicly “out” me. If I wanted to keep my corporate identity separate from my Burning Man life, he would take that privilege away from me. And in the process, maliciously slur me with lies.
Before I even went to Burning Man, I had a nickname. Pretty much everyone in my family, and almost all of my friends, call me “Saus”. I named the first company I started after my nickname, “Sausage Software”. I owned the domain name sausage.com, and wrote software for making Web pages called HotDog. In 1997, Wired magazine named HotDog as the third most downloaded piece of software on the Internet – after Netscape, the only real browser of the time, and Eudora, the only real mail application of the time.
I started the company in my bedroom when I was 22, and down to my last $18. 16 months later I took it public, it was the first Internet company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange. I became the youngest ever CEO of a public company, taking a record Rupert Murdoch (who inherited his Dad’s business) had held since the 1950’s.
When I went to Burning Man for the first time in 1998, I had already built my own community of more than 1 million people. By the time I left the business in 2000, retiring at age 26, this had grown to 3 million. We had more than 800,000 active users, who were using the product at least once a month. This community went on to become Sitepoint, which is still the largest webmaster community in the world, and regularly in the Top 1000 websites. We competed with some of the biggest and most powerful companies in the industry: IBM, Adobe, Symantec, Microsoft. HotDog was the #2 product in its category, beaten only by Microsoft’s FrontPage – which was given away for free with Office, the world’s most widely used business application.
In 2000, I sold the company just after the famous “dot com crash” for $700 million. Our peak market cap was $1.7 billion, so one way to look at that is we lost a billion dollars. But I think most people would say to go from nothing to a $700 million exit in 5 years was a pretty good run for a kid in his twenties with no experience, money or family connections. At the time of the sale, I had created 1200 jobs and enabled hundreds of thousands of people around the world to earn a living building web sites – a profession that didn’t even exist in February 1995 when I started. Back then, there was no Amazon, no e-commerce, the browser (Netscape/Mozilla) was free software from a college not a company, and Yahoo was a list of web sites, not a search engine. We played a major role in making the web easy and accessible to people in more than 200 countries. We gave our software away for free to schools and sold site licenses incredibly cheaply to colleges. In fact, I gave it away for free to anyone – for the first 30 days. After that, you had to pay. I called it “the heroin model” – we get you hooked for free, then you love it so much you’ll gladly give us your money. The basic version of our product cost $29 and the professional one was $99. 75% of our sales were for the more expensive product, which had more features.
Some of the “Black Rock City Communist Party” at burningman.com have said anyone with money didn’t make it, they stole it. It’s hard to see where my theft was. I made a dozen people working for me millionaires – a common practice these days in the tech industry, where Twitter’s IPO was estimated to create 1600 millionaires from its staff, but practically unheard of in Australia at the time. Many of my founding team have gone on to great success since, with Sitepoint/99 Designs, Hitwise, Reactive, and Urbanise – another company I founded, which went public 3 months ago.
@steveouttrim I don't think anyone could ask for a better apprenticeship than at Sausage!
I’ve heard countless stories since my first IPO from ordinary people who saw me on TV and believed in my vision, bought stock, and were able to pay off their mortgage. The stock was $0.08 at its lowest, and $8.20 at its highest. After Sausage’s IPO, we raised $130 million from corporate investors Intel, Telstra, and St George Bank, and turned that into more than $500 million for those guys in less than 2 years. The company that bought us, SMS Management and Technology, paid a fair price and got an amazing amount of value – the most elite technical team in the Southern Hemisphere.
How is any of that theft? And how does any of that make me a “bad Burner”?
It’s almost 3 years since I started Burners.Me, and I’ve never told this story before. I’ve never made a big deal about who I am, what I’ve accomplished in my career, or what I do in my “day job”. I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to hide it, either – my photo appears with every comment I make, and I’ve talked about some of the charities and companies I’m involved with before. I wrote under the pseudonym “burnersxxx” – why xxx? Because I’m only interested in talking to adults, and I believe the drugs, nudity, and sex of Burning Man are not suitable for children (not to mention Playa lung, Playa foot, and the other harsh physical realities of the environment). Political correctness might have its place in the world, but not on my blog. I want to speak frankly, coarsely sometimes, and about adult themes.
Why try to keep my professional life separate from my time at Burning Man? It’s because of the reputation of the event – one which, according to the information I’ve published above, is well deserved. I am an investor in many different businesses, that employ thousands of people. I have a number of investments in the security space, an area that is notoriously conservative. Some of the technologies my teams have developed over the years required a Munitions Export license (for military grade cryptography), which means vetting by the Department of Defense. I travel extensively around the world, and for certain countries have to go through complicated processes to get visas. I have a lot of business activity in the Middle East, specifically all the Emirates of the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman. Some of these places are governed by strict Islamic sharia law, where not even alcohol is permitted – and drugs are a death sentence. In Dubai, “bringing drugs into the country” includes drugs that are in your system because, for example, you smoked prescription marijuana a week before. Holding hands with your wife in public can get you thrown in jail. I have always felt that a public association between my corporate identity and Burning Man could make it harder for me to do deals in these places. Not only that – it would make life harder for the many people who work for me, who have nothing to do with Burning Man and no desire to go. “Guilt by association”, people who are completely innocent being affected by my personal life.
Well, now Danger Ranger, a man living under a pseudonym, with a 14-year “black hole” in his LinkedIn resumé, has decided to take that away from me. Why? Apparently, to take some of the Burner community’s quite legitimate heat off the founders and their Board of Directors.
If you believed the trolls, you’d think I’m somehow embarrassed about who I am and what I’ve accomplished in my life, but this is hardly the end of the world for me. After re-engaging with business life again more than a decade ago to build up facilities management software company Urbanise (formerly Majitek), I stepped down from their board in February, and it went public without me in September. I own a bunch of stock, but no longer have anything to do with the company. At 41, I’ve pretty much retired for the second time. For the last 18 months, I have been writing a book about the “Dark Side of Utopia”, which I always intended to publish under my own name, rather than a pseudonym. The choice of where and when to link this blog with my research has now been taken away from me, but I’m going to do my best to turn that into a positive. I’m starting to get sick of only writing about Burning Man, anyway. I used to believe in them, used to drink the Kool Aid, but the more research I’ve done, and the more of the actions of this group that I’ve chronicled, the more the cult-like indoctrination has worn off. I see things now as they really are, and it’s disheartening.
This story should be a lesson to anyone else in the 55% of Burners who don’t tell the public they go to the festival. Your privacy means nothing. Your career means nothing. The truth means nothing. Speak out against the “Almighty Borg”, and they will have no hesitation about doing whatever they think they can to hurt you. This year has seen a spate of suicides in the wake of the event – 3 from DPW, I believe. This is nothing new, it has been happening for a while, and like so many other things with this cult, gets hushed up and swept under the rug. They are the only organization since Adolf Hitler’s Nazis to employ a full-time “Minister of Propaganda” – yes, that is really Will Chase’s title. And look at the spin that comes out of them. “Oh we listened to your concerns! Now Commodification Camps have to go through the placement team!” This was already their policy. “We’ve discontinued our Donation Tickets program” – which only happened because we caught them red-handed. They tried to deny it, and Burners sent us more evidence. Then they tried to ignore it. Eventually, when they realized this wasn’t working, they came clean and admitted it – but tried to hide it in a bunch of verbiage saying “we’ve always had a Holiday pre-sale program”. No matter that they don’t even try to pretend this is so Burners can buy tickets to Gift at Christmas any more.
And what of the rich? We waited 3 months to get some kind of statement from BMOrg about Commodification Camp concerns, and what did Larry Harvey say?
Wealth is a straw man issue.
And then what did Danger Ranger do, that very night? Talk about attacking the Straw Man.
Look! The Goodyear blimp!
He posted on Facebook at 1 in the morning. It seemed like he was doing what the community was asking for – calling out their Director Jim Tananbaum for running a for-profit Commodification Camp, despite the strict wording in the Burning Man Project’s Bylaws about volunteer directors profiting from the activities of the group, and the requirement that all Directors uphold the Ten Principles. But reading the fine print, as we are forced to do with these propagandists, showed that really he wasn’t throwing Tananbaum under the bus at all. He was giving him a pass “oh, he lost tens of thousands” – which implies that his goal from the beginning was profit, because otherwise it would be “he gifted tens of thousands” – something many of us have done at Burning Man, without charging $17,000/head, bussing in Mistresses of Merriment to entertain our high rollers, and creating elaborate wristband-only cocktail lounges complete with paid sherpas and drinks menus. Instead, Danger Ranger blamed all the problems of Caravancicle on the camp’s producer, who he then accused of embezzlement.
No, in a classic case of misdirection, it was actually ME that Michael Mikel (if indeed that is his real name) chose to throw under the bus. Not just by “outing” me with my real name, which I have never used publicly in relation to Burning Man; but by spreading outright lies about me. Because this is a Burning Man founder, owner, and director, his words are more than just some cranky Burner on the Internet. They are taken as gospel by many in the community.
He said:
I immediately addressed his concerns, saying:
But it seems it was too late. The nearly 70-year old former Navy seaman, infiltrator of cults and neo-nazi groups, defacer of billboards, builder of robots, underground explorer, had gone to bed. That didn’t stop many other Internet trolls from piling on the hate.
I stayed there until the early hours of the morning, addressing the issues raised. Hoping that Danger Ranger would respond. I messaged him privately. The trolling escalated. People started posting personal photos from my Facebook page. I told them they didn’t have permission, and asked them to take them down. Some did, others went and made dedicated web sites just to post my personal photos.
Finally, about 9 am, Danger Ranger appeared again commenting on his post. “Great!”, I thought. “Surely this person, who is posting under a pseudonym, with a legal responsibility as a Director to uphold the Ten Principles and act ethically, will at least respect my request to keep my corporate identity out of his rant! Maybe he will even realize that he was misinformed, and remove the lies!” But no, Danger ignored me and just responded to other commenters. Then, I was locked out. I couldn’t get into his post any more. Some loyal readers have since told me that he then went through the comments on his post and simply deleted mine. Suddenly, his account was suspended.
I was instantly blamed for doing it. For the record: NO, I didn’t report Danger Ranger for using a fake name on Facebook. This happened to me about a month ago, and has been happening to many users on the Burning Man Facebook group – which now has no admins, thanks to people reporting pseudonyms there. Most of the admins there used pseudonyms. Facebook has a “real names” policy, and like it or not, rules are rules. Since I joined Facebook in 2007, I’ve met about a thousand people all around the world who only know me as “Zos”. No matter, I was forced to change my name. This really sucks, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a founder of Burning Man, an event that I love so much I’ve spent three years of my life writing about it for free. As a gift, because I’m shit at art but I know a thing or two about the Internet.
I was on Danger Ranger’s facebook group for hours, trying to clear up his false statements about me. It makes no sense that I would do that, if I wanted to report his account.
But the blame continued. And Danger Ranger, rather than correcting his lies, used his official power as a Burning Man director to up the attacks on me. He commented on blog.burningman.com at 9:12am, and his comment got picked up by known troll Simon of the Playa at 9:14am on ePlaya (to his credit, Simon removed my corporate name from the post, which is required by ePlaya’s terms of service). I’ve also heard that Danger Ranger’s post was then sent out to thousands of people via their Regionals mailing list.
BMOrg changed their blog to allow replies to comments. Propaganda Minister Will Chase, and Communications Director Megan Miller, were all over the blog responding to comments. I replied to Danger Ranger, once again correcting the false statements.
They could have edited the message so it was less of a personal attack on me, but still critical of Burners.Me. Instead they said:
So there you have it, folks. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Truth doesn’t matter to BMOrg. The founders can openly lie, just to smear someone’s reputation, and they feel no need to correct it. Things BMOrg write on the “Voices of Burning Man” don’t have to be 100% factually accurate, no matter who it’s coming from.
The troll attacks against me have continued – funny, given that I am the one accused of trolling. This post is long enough as it is, so I’m going to write about that in more detail later for those who are interested.
If other wealthy, successful people out there are reading this, be warned. “What happens on the Playa, stays on the Playa” is a myth. This cult has thousands of volunteers at its disposal, tattooing their logo on their bodies, ready to go to extreme lengths to do their bidding and cultivate “borg points”. This NPD-driven CULTure provides a convenient “plausible deniabillity” to the instigators, who can operate through unseen proxies. The founders have shown that they have no qualms about slandering their customers, and will not show respect for truth or privacy. This comes straight from the top. Associate with this group at your peril, and donate your money to their tax-exempt structure if you must – but if you think you’re making the world a better place by taking drugs at a rave, well I have a rainbow bridge in the desert I can sell you.
One thing I always loved about Burning Man is people didn’t ask “what do you do?” or “where do you live?” or “what car do you drive?” For a brief while, 20 years ago, I was kinda famous in Australia and New Zealand. There’s almost nothing good that comes with fame, it’s pretty much all downside. At Burning Man, I could relax and party without having to deal with muckraking journalists trying to “expose me” and drive my company’s share price down, making life harder for all my employees. The Burner I was talking to could be one of the long-term unemployed, but rather than sitting on their ass smoking dope, had worked for months scraping together used materials to create an amazing piece of art. Or they could be growing the dope, and using some of the funds to build some incredible fire-breathing apparatus with their engineering skills. They could be the founder of a tech company, or a famous actor, or a politician, or a trust-fund kid who spends their life working on charitable projects. I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. We were all the same. We were all Burners, using the same port-a-potties and choking on the same dust storm. Having fun together at a party that we’d all traveled miles into the middle of nowhere to enjoy.
Some have tried to paint the Commodification Camp issue as a “class war”, advocating everything from vandalism and arson to violence as the appropriate response – in the process, deflecting protests away from First Camp, and towards anyone in a nice RV. Certainly, there is an “anti-tech” element in San Francisco today, driven by escalating real estate prices and the loss of housing that has been subsidized through rent control (a concept alien to most of the world). Some are making fortunes in real estate and tech, while others are being forced to move from neighborhoods that have gentrified to places they can still afford. They wait in line for public transport, and see happy, successful young people getting onto buses to take them to booming tech companies – and decide that is someone else’s fault. This really should have nothing to do with Burning Man. Up until now, I thought that those saying “eat the rich” and “Burning Man is the front lines of the revolution” were just a few kooks. I didn’t think it was a deep part of the ethos of the event, at which I’ve met some of the richest people in the world.
But Larry Harvey saying “wealth is a straw man”, followed by Danger Ranger trying to single me out as some sort of hypocrite for having default world success, shows that this goes all the way to the top. Perhaps because they’re a “non-profit”, they think they can cash out of the event with millions while pretending to still be “part of the people”. Perhaps they have to cultivate this charade to encourage thousands of volunteers to build their $30 million event for free. Maybe there’s a split on the board, with Danger and his cronies wanting to go back to their anarchist punk cacophony “Satanists with guns” roots, while Larry and Marian and Bear court the world’s billionaires and venture capitalists and Presidential candidates.
From my perspective, I still don’t think it matters. I’ve burned sleeping in a car, I’ve burned in the most extreme luxury you can imagine (a post for another day). For the last 4 Burns, it’s been my year 2000 Fleetwood RV that went to Burning Man – the only RV I’ve ever owned. I’ve gifted tickets to friends, and I’ve traded tickets to people who drove so that I could drink. I’ve bought flights from overseas for friends and family to join me at Burning Man, and paid camp dues for them. So what? How does this make me a bad Burner?
For three years, I have contributed my art – such as it is – to this community. Not just for a week, but pretty much every day. I’ve given my time for free, on top of what I’d done previously: helping to fund art cars and art projects and logistics, and gifting the experience to virgins. For that, I get called a “troll” and all kinds of other names. And I get the Directors of Burning Man bringing their drug orgy into contact with my corporate career, which will have no real affect on me in my retirement, but could potentially hurt many people around the world who’ve never been to Burning Man and never would.
I go out of my way to provide links and references to all the claims I make on this site. It takes a long time to do this. I have always invited anyone to come here and comment, whether they agree or disagree. If they update me with new information, I change my stories. I take the time to respond to almost every single comment – even the trolls.
Meanwhile, Burning Man’s founders simply LIE about someone in their community, and have no concern whatsoever to correct it, or provide any evidence of their claims. They barely speak to the riff-raff, preferring to trot out their volunteers to cop the flak and their media team to dispense the spin. It takes months to get anything that even remotely looks like a straight answer from them. Many of their people are made to sign non-disclosure agreements and prevented from commenting on social media.
I share my opinions here, sure. That’s the whole point of a blog. I discuss what people are saying on the Internet about Burning Man, I chime in on the conversation with what I think about it all. I know that not everyone agrees with my opinions: I never asked them to, or expected them to. Does that mean I don’t have a right to express them, just because some don’t agree? Of course not. Freedom of speech still means something in the USA – a country I have a visa to live and work in because of investing in startups and creating jobs. This site is coming up on 1400 posts, and I stand by pretty much all of them. About 10% were written by others, so I can’t include those – but I am still proud of them, and glad to have shared them. Many of our detractors say that we publish misinformation, to which I reply “please provide an example”. So far, none of them have been able to produce any examples. Seriously – out of 1400 posts, you can’t provide ONE? So is it really misinformation, or is that just an unfounded slur? Sure, I publish rumors and speculation: but I tell you when it’s that. I treat my readers as smart enough to make up their own minds. Over 90% of our articles are positive, but they’re not the ones that get the most shares – leading to a situation where people who don’t even read this blog, complain about how negative it all is because that’s what’s showing up from Burners.Me in their Facebook news feed. The ratio of positive and entertaining posts is even higher than 90% on our Facebook page.
As for “trolling” and “sock puppets” – it’s something I deal with a lot, but have never employed myself. Why would I? What would the possible motivation be? I already have my own, massive audience. Why would I go to the trouble of researching and fact-checking everything I write, if I was just going to make unfounded attacks under multiple false identities on other peoples’ sites? How does that benefit me in any way? On the other hand, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see what the motivation would be for BMOrg and their cadre of loyal volunteers to cast aspersions about me under fake names, and try to address facts and figures with lies and smears.
This site has more truth about Burning Man than any other on the Internet. Don’t believe the smear campaign: we do our homework, we publish references to our claims, we deal in FACTS. Even if the truth is sometimes not what the sparkle ponies want to hear.
Would Burning Man have stopped their Donation Tickets program, if we – thanks to leaks from our own loyal readers – hadn’t exposed it? I highly doubt it. Hopefully there will be more positive changes to come in the future. Maybe they will up the efficiency of their charity, and do more good with it. Maybe they will consider making ethics, integrity, and honesty part of their corporate culture.
Like many of my endeavors, Burners.Me has been successful. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WordPress, we have nearly 120,000 followers. Our audience is spiking again over the last couple of days thanks to all the publicity, which I doubt was Danger Ranger’s intention in attacking me. I don’t profit from this site in any way, it is totally free, and totally brought to you at my expense.
This year we set new traffic records. A single post I did on Facebook went to nearly 1.2 million people; the same story on the web was viewed by more than a million people over 2 days. In August, 1,512,864 people visited this site. We had the #1 most read story and #1 most seen blog on WordPress, out of 42 million. We’re regularly in the Top 100 of both categories. We’ve been quoted as a credible source by the New York Times, among many others. We’re usually reaching more than 1 million people per week on Facebook. They can smear me, but they can’t shut me up – and a lot of people are doing their own research, looking into the facts for themselves instead of blindly accepting the corporate spin, and waking up.
Where do we go from here? I still plan to write about Burning Man, and Burner culture. The more they attack me, the more I get motivated to expose. I’ve heard they have an “Access Control List” of people banned from the event, and some online critics are on it. If it includes anyone, I’d think it would be me – punished without trial or recourse, guilty of nothing but loving the event, and wanting its management group to be accountable for their words and actions.
BMOrg to me is looking increasingly desperate, a formerly great lion thrashing around in its death throes. Maybe they can pull a rabbit out of a hat, salvage their crumbling credibility, and preserve the awesomeness of this culture through their transition. Or maybe, like many startups, the money comes in, the Founders become less relevant, and the soul goes away. Maybe the long awaited transparency will come, and Larry & Co will look like saints. Or perhaps the skeletons will pile up in the closet until the “fetid ossuary” (thanks Reb!) can no longer be contained. Perhaps there will be amusing, Cacophonist pranks on the Playa against First Camp; or perhaps there will be anarchist attacks and criminal assault and destruction of property against anyone with a flash RV. Maybe they can grow and improve the culture, through Regionals and acculturation of virgins. Maybe veteran Burners were never meant to continue being part of Burning Man anyway, and it will be no great loss to the culture without them – bringing the Principles to virgins will make the world better, than letting the people who’ve made the party what it is keep coming back for more. Maybe enough veterans will be interested in preserving what we’ve all made together, to start something fresh and new, fair and open.
Elon Musk said “Burning Man IS Silicon Valley”, and that to me is the more interesting story. What’s the real history of Silicon Valley, and how does Burning Man fit into that? How do drugs and cults fit into that? Where is technology going, now that Google is becoming SkyNet, and the government is intruding into our private lives in ways we’ve never before imagined? What hope is there for humanity, in the Age of Artilects, cyborgs, and transhumanism?
Pile onto the Burners.Me hate parade if you want. If you want to be that guy, then slander my professional identity, steal my private photos to paste all over the Interwebz, dredge up whatever dirt others have published and post links to it. It’s nothing I haven’t encountered before, I’ve dealt with plenty of lawyers and been in plenty of lawsuits. Heard plenty of fat jokes. Unfortunately, it’s something that goes with the territory, as I think most successful people can tell you. The world is full of jealous and petty people, who if they can’t achieve anything themselves, want to point the finger of blame outwards towards others. If someone drives past them in a shiny Ferrari, these people say “look at that asshole”. I still believe Burners are different. While I’m no longer drinking the Kool Aid BMOrg are pissing into our mouths, I do believe in Burners. Burners are some of the smartest, coolest, funniest, most talented people in the world. If anyone can make the world a better place, it’s Burners. Thanks for all your support, and I hope together we can make this site more interesting and positive in the future.
Finally, more than a quarter of a year after the last week-long Burning Man event ended, BMOrg has given some official answers to the many concerns raised by the community in the wake of Caravansary. They gave us a double whammy:
These posts only went on the “Voices of Burning Man” – their official blog. They weren’t posted to the 817,000 people on their Facebook page.
I recommend you read both posts in their entirety, because this article is going to be discussing the aspects of them that are relevant to the 115,000 Burners.Me readers. I’m going to talk about the concerns they addressed, directly or indirectly; and the ones they pretended don’t exist.
If you were expecting me to say “everything is wonderful now, BMOrg are so amazing for listening to us, let’s hug it out and party up!”…you should stop reading now, because you’re at the wrong blog. If we got the transparency we’d been promised, or got answers to most of the questions raised as “Community Concerns” here and at burningman.com .org, then I might be able to say that. But we didn’t, so I can’t – blame me for whining, rather than them for ignoring and misdirecting, if that is your wont.
Whether or not the community’s concerns get addressed, Burning Man will go on, and we can all have a good time there. Hey, it’s just a rave – who cares? “If you don’t like it, start your own”.
For those who do care, because they think there’s something special about this event – it’s more than just a festival, more than just a big drug- and sex- fuelled party, more than a corporate networking event – please read on. I care about this unique culture that we’ve all been creating together, and that’s why I’m taking the time to write this.
While it is nice that finally they have acknowledged some of our concerns, these posts raise as many questions as they answer.
Summary
As predicted, BMOrg have tried to downplay everything: “it was less than 1% of 1250 camps”. They make a big fuss about “policy changes”, but in the end the only real change is promising to end the practice of selling invite-only Donation tickets which we caught them at red-handed. Commodification Camps will have to have an interactive component, but they did this year too. Burning Man’s Board of Directors have nothing to do with the Burning Man event, so what they get up to at the event is nothing to do with BMOrg. Sherpas don’t even get a mention, they’re a non-issue. So are workers’ and artists’ rights. 58 Burner theme camps applied for placement and didn’t get it; 12 Commodification Camps got prime placement near the Plaza areas. Because none of them actually made a profit, it’s no big deal. BMOrg held on to 5,700 tickets all through the year, on top of the 61,000 official tickets. The Ten Principles are not rules, they’re just an “ethos”. On to the Carnival of Smoke and Mirrors now, Burners, they listened and they made a policy change so we can all be happy now.
Introduction
They are still trying to use language to re-define and diminish the issues.
The term “turnkey” has been used to describe camps with paid teams that set up infrastructure before other camp members arrive. This general definition could be applied to many camps, including many well-known, beloved and highly participatory theme camps.
[so why persist in using it? The community is calling them Commodification Camps, because this definition clearly explains the problem – Ed.]
Turnkey is a category that includes a variety of camps along a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum are camps that offer major contributions to the playa and depend on infrastructural support to do their work and provide their offering on the playa (the Temple Camp, for example); these camps have a team that provides support services, enabling their fellow campmates to focus on giving in ways that benefit the wider BRC community.
On the other end of the spectrum are “plug and play” or “concierge camps” (A.K.A. hotel camps, resort camps, commodification camps), where vacation-type experiences are sold in package deals at exclusive prices, often with no expectation or commitment by campers to contribute to the larger community. It is this latter type of camp we are addressing here
Why not just call them Commodification Camps? At least they acknowledged (once, in passing) that some people call them that. However, their response of saying “they’re all turnkey camps but some people call them concierge camps, so we’re going to talk about rich people and their luxury lifestyle, which exists in the Default world too”…is answering the wrong questions. If BMOrg really thinks this is what the community’s concerns are, they need to go to a listening workshop. Other than a few “Radical Revolutionaries” on *.burningman.com advocating vandalism, violence, class warfare, and communism, most Burners couldn’t care less how much money someone has. The whole point about this party is what you bring to the middle of nowhere to give to others, not what you do in the Default world. No Burner should be “Burnier-Than-Thou”, and no camp should be closed off to Burners.
It is the idea behind the Commodification Camps that is the problem: turning something free, based on Gifting by the whole community, into something packaged up and sold to profit a few. Burning Man is supposed to be based on principles such as Radical Self-Reliance, Participation, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leave No Trace, and particularly, Decommodification:
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Decommodification was presented to us as a core Principle that Burners live by. It wasn’t supposed to be a for-profit LLC, extracting cash from “Burning Man” which has “fully transitioned to a non-profit” – except, it seems, for the annual event called “Burning Man”.
Being a member of the Burning Man Project Board does not grant any authority to make decisions about, or influence the operations of, the Burning Man event.
Is the Burning Man organization profiting off turnkey camps? How did turnkey camps get all their tickets? Do turnkey camps get preferential treatment? Were people buying blocks of tickets through the Burning Man Project donation ticket program in the days before the event? If so, why? Are turnkey camps undermining the practice of Decommodification and Self-Reliance? What is going to happen to the turnkey camps going forward? Is there accountability for poor behavior?
Since they didn’t bother to directly answer these in their “FAQ”, let me do it now.
Is the Burning Man organization profiting off turnkey camps?
No – not any more than they profit off any other camp. If any Burning Man Project Directors were trying to, they didn’t end up making any profit, so it doesn’t count. Anyway, Burning Man Project Directors have nothing to do with the Burning Man event.
How did turnkey camps get all their tickets?
As well as through methods available to “rank and file” Burners, it was via Invite-only Donation tickets above face value, and buying them from scalpers. They would have us believe that not a single ticket went to any Commodification Camp in the Directed group sale (aka World’s Biggest Guest List).
Concierge camps purchased tickets through all of the same avenues available to other participants and other large camps, including the early Pre-Sale, the main Individual Sale and on the secondary market. A few of these camps also purchased tickets through the Burning Man Project’s Donation Ticket Program
Invitations were sent to participants who had previously contributed to Burning Man Project, or who had expressed interest in doing so, including some in plug and play and concierge camps
Do turnkey camps get preferential treatment?
Officially, no. Pretty much every camp is a turnkey camp. They all said they would have interactive elements, and pick up their MOOP. Commodification Camps get no preferential treatment whatsoever, other than special access to tickets, placement in large, dedicated areas in K street, early access passes, and a lifting of the requirement to be packed up by Tuesday. Sure, they can leave tons of MOOP – but this will be noted by the Placement team when next year comes around.
Were people buying blocks of tickets through the Burning Man Project donation ticket program in the days before the event? If so, why?
Yes – technically, not in the last 3 weeks before the event. To raise money for BMP.
Are turnkey camps undermining the practice of Decommodification and Self-Reliance?
Yes. No big deal, the Principles aren’t rules.
What is going to happen to the turnkey camps going forward? Is there accountability for poor behavior?
Nothing. Poor behavior by a camp in the previous year and a bad MOOP score will be considered by the volunteer placement team in the future.
These answers are far from satisfactory. And the questions themselves left a lot to be desired, as they did not really address the community’s concerns.
The Community’s Questions
Earlier in the year, Halcyon chimed in on the Burning Blog. He got slammed for defending Plug-n-Plays, and to his credit took time to understand the issues, then posted again. He listened to all of us, and his swift response showed that he listened. In the comments during the controversy, he made a good attempt at summarizing the community’s questions:
...a clear break down of the issues at hand would be really helpful if anyone has it. (Not every argument – just the issues.)
Here is my first attempt. Please correct me. Are these the issues fueling Burner frustration?
***
1) Isolation / exclusivity of safari-style camps (wristband areas)
2) Use of paid labor of ticket holders during the event. (Some people working as gifts to community while others are working to make money)
3) Camp organizers running turnkey camps for profit. (Commodification of the Burning Man experience)
4) Unfair attainment of tickets by wealthy donors. (blocks of $650 tickets offered “discreetly” – while others use STEP)
5) Unfair placement of turnkey camps (Inadequate interactivity while others do not get placed)
6) Board member connections to above practices
I think that’s not a bad summary. You could add:
7) Silence from BMOrg on all of the above
8) Lack of transparency (promised since March).
I think this is a better description of the community’s actual concerns, rather than just the ones BMOrg cherry-picked to address. So how did they do with these questions?
1) Isolation / exclusivity of safari-style camps (wristband areas)
ACKNOWLEDGED, BUT NOT ADDRESSED. Commodification Camps can continue to be exclusive, even though it is “frowned upon” by BMOrg.
2) Use of paid labor of ticket holders during the event. (Some people working as gifts to community while others are working to make money)
NOT ACKNOWLEDGED OR ADDRESSED
3) Camp organizers running turnkey camps for profit. (Commodification of the Burning Man experience)
DENIED. They acknowledged (a) that there were Commodifcation Camps – 12 of them – but none of them made a profit. Therefore (b) no-one created a camp to make money. This is a logical fallacy known as a non-sequitur – (b) does not follow (a). “Attempted murder” is a crime, even though no actual murder occurred.
4) Unfair attainment of tickets by wealthy donors. (blocks of $650 tickets offered “discreetly” – while others use STEP)
ACKNOWLEDGED. They sold 1200 invitation-only Donation Tickets for above face value.
Invitations were sent to participants who had previously contributed to Burning Man Project, or who had expressed interest in doing so, including some in plug and play and concierge camps
They’ve cancelled this program for next year, though they still haven’t announced how the ticketing will be handled in 2015, or if there will be any price increases.
The door remains open for this type of thing to re-emerge under a different name. Will Chase, commenting on this blog a couple of weeks ago, said “Actually, charitable donation tickets are tickets that Burning Man donates to charities for their fundraising raffles, etc.” So it appears that VIP Donation tickets might be gone, but Charitable Donation tickets remain.
What remains unsaid, is blocks of tickets being sold by BMOrg insiders – possibly on the secondary market.
5) Unfair placement of turnkey camps (Inadequate interactivity while others do not get placed)
DENIED. They said there were 58 Burner camps who applied for placement and didn’t get it. This is supposedly fair. “Thousands” of Burners camp without getting placement – this used to be tens of thousands. BMOrg claim that all the Commodification Camps that got special placement were “committed to providing interactive experiences”, and they were placed deliberately around the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock plazas to create community.
6) Board member connections to above practices.
DENIED. The Board of Directors of the Burning Man Project have nothing to do with Burning Man. Involvement of any BoD in any Commodification Camps was not acknowledged. It appears that directors can break the rules at Burning Man, and act outside the Principles, without consequence.
Being a member of the Burning Man Project Board does not grant any authority to make decisions about, or influence the operations of, the Burning Man event. This also applies to resources at the event.
7) Silence from BMOrg on all of the above
Despite their posts, most of the concerns remain unacknowledged and unaddressed. They have spoken, but mostly to deny all of the above.
8) Lack of transparency (promised since March).
IGNORED. The promised transparency is still “coming soon”. It is now 9 months since Larry Harvey promised us a “clean, well lighted suite of rooms” for both Black Rock City, LLC and BMP. Which we took to mean Profit and Loss statements and Balance Sheets – regular accounts, not the Afterburn reports which omit revenues and profits. The final deadline for filing IRS Form 990 for corporations that requested two time extensions was November 15, so this is overdue for the Burning Man Project 2013. It may be 2016 before we see anything for 2014.
Burners.Me Concerns
Here are some of the issues that still concern me.
Scalping
They denied that any tickets were taken out of the STEP queue. However, they stopped short of telling us exactly how many tickets were sold via STEP. We just have to take their word for this, since there is no audit, no transparency.
What they did acknowledge was that they added another 2500 tickets to be sold via STEP. They also added 2000 tickets to the last-minute OMG sale, and they sold 1200 Donation tickets. So this is 5,700 tickets that they sold IN ADDITION to the 61,000 tickets they “officially” had.
Why keep nearly 10% of the tickets in reserve until about a month before the event? It seems a little shady to me: artificially creating scarcity. The main effect of this was to keep ticket prices high on the secondary market all through the year, which was no doubt useful to justify the above face value asking price of the Donation tickets. Their permit specified their population for 5 years, so it’s not like they didn’t know they had these tickets to sell. $780,000 for 1200 Donation Tickets, plus $1,710,000 for 4500 tickets at $380 – this is an extra $2.5 million that they kept “up their sleeves”. If the event could break even with 61,000 tickets, then this is pure profit.
I know that certain BMOrg insiders get access to blocks of tickets they can sell. Do any of these get sold above face value? Other than illegally recording someone in a “sting”, this is impossible to prove. We’ll probably never know. Even BMOrg may not know. Their creation of extra scarcity sure helps this hypothetical scenario, which would be a way to award bonuses without actually paying out any extra cash.
Sherpas
Many Burners were dismayed to hear about the acceptance of paid employees in camps, which was highlighted by the New York Times before the event, and by whistle-blowers afterwards. The sherpas take tickets away from participating Burners. Other big concerns for many Burners were the slave-like working conditions imposed on these employees – including “if you quit, we’ll dump you in the desert” – and Commodification Camps putting up “help wanted” ads at the event hiring people for cash.
The impression you would get from BMOrg’s post is sherpas don’t exist. Perhaps it creates a sticky situation for BMOrg, who rely heavily on free volunteer labor to produce the event. If they acknowledge that there are many people out there getting paid, they bring to the attention of thousands of volunteers that they’re not. There was no mention of worker’s rights, which were demanded by some DPW volunteers, or a more fair treatment of artists.
Special Access to Tickets
They have finally admitted that they sold tickets to VIPs above face value – 1200 of them. They insist that none of these tickets were sold after August 1, which conflicts with reports from our sources. How did they work out who got a VIP invitation? That has still not been adequately explained.
Invitations were sent to participants who had previously contributed to Burning Man Project, or who had expressed interest in doing so, including some in plug and play and concierge camps. Other well-established theme camps also purchased Donation Tickets to cover a shortfall in tickets for their build crews and campmates.
What was the breakdown between existing donors, Commodification Camps, and Guest List theme camps?
Board Involvement
Their argument is that the Board of Directors of the Burning Man Project have nothing to do with the Burning Man event. This seems absurd, and is possibly necessary due to the self-dealing laws which prevent non-profit directors making profits off the tax-exempt organizations they volunteer for. Following this logic, the directors of Decommodification, LLC should also have nothing to do with the Burning Man event – even though, according to their lawsuit, they are DBA (doing business as) Burning Man.
Being a member of the Burning Man Project Board does not grant any authority to make decisions about, or influence the operations of, the Burning Man event.
If the Burning Man Project exists to promote the values of Burning Man around the world, shouldn’t it be important for its Directors to promote the values AT BURNING MAN?
Selective Rule Enforcement
2 of BMOrg’s Board of Directors are now working for AirBnB. AirBnB had listings at Burning Man this year. AirBnB’s “ironic” Burning Man advertisement is still up.
BoD Jim Tananbaum was behind Caravancicle. If such camps are completely against BM, how was he allowed to get away with it?
BoD Chip Conley made a video at Burning Man to promote his Fest300 business. DJ Sander van Doorn got shut down by BMOrg’s IP team for making a video of his trip this year. Meanwhile, Conley’s Fest300 commercial is still up. The video shows multiple violations of drone safety rules. Both videos are great, but that’s not the point. Why was Sander’s video bad, but Chip’s is fine? The same rules should apply to all Burners, whether they volunteer for the Board, Gate, DPW, or on the decks at a sound camp.
image: Sid Penance/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Disabled Vehicles
In 2014, we heard of the rumor, but can find no evidence internally that any camp received handicapped stickersfor non-disabled golf carts or other conveyances
A very interesting choice of words. Could camps have non-decorated utility golf carts or “other conveyances”, that weren’t for handicapped people? This statement certainly allows for that – as long as they didn’t display a handicapped sticker, it seems like it was fine. If they had a handicapped person and received a sticker, it doesn’t seem like there was much enforcement about who was actually using the vehicle.
The information leaked to us by Burners is different. If you have any further knowledge or photos, please share.
Does the Board even care?
We gathered information internally and externally, and held a roundtable discussion with the Burning Man Project Board of Directors.
We then held a series of internal meetings with participation from three of Burning Man’s founders, event operations leadership, and the key teams poised to address this issue directly (Placement, Community Services, Ticketing and Communications).
What about the other 3 Founders? Is there some sort of internal politics going on behind the scenes? Or have they retired already, and just can’t be bothered with it all any more?
It took time to respond because we were determined not just to say “this is what happened” but also to say “this is what we plan to do about it.”
So what do they plan to do about it?
Cancel the Donation tickets. That’s about the extent of their policy changes. Although Commodification Camps will be required to have a strong interactive component, that was their policy already.
bringing a VIP lifestyle experience — with velvet ropes and wristbands — introduces an element of exclusivity into a culture that values inclusion, and those that opt in to these kinds of camps miss out on the transformative power of the event.
OK. So what will they do about that? Nada. Those camps are “missing out” and showing “bad manners”, but otherwise, no problem to be addressed, no policies to be changed.
What is the Burning Man organization doing to stop this? Each year, we encounter a handful of companies advertising luxury, all-expenses paid package tours of Burning Man. When they make use of the Burning Man name or logo, our intellectual property team works to curtail promotional efforts by forcing any reference to ‘Burning Man’ to be removed.
So as long as Caravancicle doesn’t advertise, no problem. If Billboard wants to write a story promoting VIP festival packages on “Billionaire’s Row”, well, nothing BMOrg can do about it.
Meanwhile, artists still cannot in any way use Burning Man to market their art or fund-raise.
If Burning Man stops businesses from selling things in BRC, how can it allow for-profit theme camps that package and sell experiences in our gift economy? Burning Man does not condone this activity. Commodification camps are not only in direct conflict with our culture, they are also not allowed by the terms of our permit.
BMOrg were clearly aware of the 12 Commodification Camps that they placed. They even gave one of the organizers a seat on their Board. They also gave those camps access to the invite-only Donation ticket program, that regular Burners didn’t get the chance to participate in.
You can find a list of the 45 permitted vendors in 2014 here. It doesn’t seem like all 12 Commodification Camps were on the list. The idea that because they didn’t end up making profits, it doesn’t matter, is not what the BLM Permit says.
Will tickets still be “packaged up” for Commodification Camps, which are now disguised as “turnkey camps on a spectrum”, and sold directly (and discreetly) under a different name than “Donation Tickets”? Some say this is the 800-lb gorilla that is still in the room. If they are, it is unlikely to be easy for us to track, unless the promised transparency somehow manifests.
Larry Harvey said “This issue of equality almost amounts to a straw man”.
Yeah it does. Equality, or lack thereof, is not the issue for the majority of Burners. Commodification, exclusivity, and Selective Rule Enforcement are the issues people have been complaining about.
It is as if these camps have been allowed to parade past the Main Sale ticket queue and insert themselves at the head of the line.
Yes. Not only is that how it seems – BMOrg have now acknowledged, that’s exactly what happened.
What I think these camps are really guilty of is being gauche. This is not so much about morals, it is more about manners, and we’re convinced bad manners can be mended.
Actually, it’s about Principles. Those who espouse them, should also be seen to be living by them, not flouting them. Can this be mended? Only if the leaders feel it’s important. Larry says:
these principles are in no way commandments. They represent an ethos that arose from the lived experience of a community; this means these values need to be internalized, they should become a kind of second nature, not a set of literal and unyielding rules that are imposed upon us
The Tin Principles. They’re not rules. They’re an ethos. Burn on.
The Community’s Response
Lest you think that we are an isolated voice in the wilderness, “being mean” because we have a “grudge against BMOrg” – here are some of the Burner community’s responses to these posts, completely independent of this site. There’s starting to be a lot of messengers to shoot.
We listened, but we really didn’t. We refuse to take responsibility for any of it. What you all saw at the event didn’t happen. Move on please.
What about hiring employees (Sherpas) to set-up/take-down the Commodification Camps and service guests?
Doesn’t look like y’all are addressing that at all here.
FYI: For the _vast_ majority of objectors, this was never about rich people bringing their luxurious lifestyles to the playa.
I can believe some of this, but not all of it. The Board of Directors information presented is definitely incomplete and I think this is a large enough topic that it deserves its own post. How is it even remotely legal for someone on a non-profit board to be profiteering from that non-profit?
So the question of did the commodification camps that were so horrible on K street get early entry and tickets from the distributed group sale has been completely ignored. This was a question I really wanted answered and seems like since we will be pissed about the answer you are just going to pretend it wasn’t asked?
When will Jim Tananbaum and his direct involvement with Caravancicle be addressed by the Organization? Not just sidestepped and alluded to? His name needs to be addressed by the Org. Saying his actions don’t effect the BM Project? How can someone be responsible for “spreading burning man culture around the world” when they setup a camp at the actual Burning Man event that blatantly disregards the majority of the 10 principles?
Just (co)modify the theme to smoke and mirrors… Because that’s what this blog/event is all about!
Pay for experience camps are totally against our principles..but are not going to be excluded… Huh? This communication seems to be a lot of heat, but no light.
It’s nice to see this information, some of which is actually new and informative. But even with months to prepare, it’s not especially satisfying.
I don’t see any policy changes that address exclusivity–apparently, as long as a camp acts “neighborly” by not actively annoying the neighbors, they can have all the security guards, velvet ropes, and wristbands they want. Such camps are hardly radically inclusive.
I also find the board of directors response completely inadequate. Very specific allegations were made and simply ignored.
There’s also no mention of penalties. If a camp lies about its intentions and violates policies (new and old), what happens? Does the camp and its attendees get ejected? Apparently not. Bad camps can re-form with new names each year, and even flagrant violators can return with none the wiser. At least if they and their guests got ejected, they’d suffer some, and the guests might not inclined to take that route again.
When will Jim Tananbaum and his direct involvement with Caravancicle be addressed by the Organization? Not just sidestepped and alluded to? His name needs to be addressed by the Org. Saying his actions don’t effect the BM Project? How can someone be responsible for “spreading burning man culture around the world” when they setup a camp at the actual Burning Man event that blatantly disregards the majority of the 10 principles?
Burning Man Board Member Jim Tananbaum’s plug and play camp is a grievous violation of what the community stands for. The idea that you could be making money at burning man, while also on the board, is an inherent conflict of interest.
There are no transparent records of how much the burning man organization makes, or what the board members make, just how much they spend – keeping the most important facts in the dark.
Larry undoubtably loves this arrangement. Pretty understandable why you would make a long text post trying to lull the reader to sleep while you simultaneously try to justify the transgressions.
True the 10 Principles are not the 10 Commandments, however, We The People of BRC insist that the powers that be respect and honor our community ethos when they are chumming with the same people compromising/ruining/gentrifying our communities outside of BRC. We are fearful the same thing is happening on the playa and not only under watchful eye of the org but with the orgs assistance! Allowing a board member to sell VIP packaged experiences and saving tickets for the wealthy is shameful to this community.
We are not asking the org to create and enforce more rules, we are asking you to honor the 10 Principles and this thing you created long ago. We’re asking you to respect the community that helped make BM what it is by not favoring the people who have more money. This will ruin BM and the people that actually care about it will stop going. Please don’t be a 10 Principle Flip Flopper because the cool rich kids are now buying into all this. Imagine the MOOP!!
I don’t really care if someone wants to build an RV fort and guard the entrances. It makes them look really, really ridiculous…but hey, it’s a free playa.
I care about ticket-holding individuals brought to Burning Man as employees who have to do whatever an on-playa boss commands, or else their lodging, pay, and survival supplies will be withheld. A lot of work happens at Burning Man, but it seems that few grasp the significance of totally commodifying a person out there. It’s not the same as splitting up camp duty shifts, and it’s bringing in the exact money/power dynamic that most of us are trying to escape for a week.
So as long as Caravancicle doesn’t advertise, no problem. If
We listened, but we really didn’t. We refuse to take responsibility for any of it. What you all saw at the event didn’t happen. Move on please.
What about hiring employees (Sherpas) to set-up/take-down the Commodification Camps and service guests?
Doesn’t look like y’all are addressing that at all here.
FYI: For the _vast_ majority of objectors, this was never about rich people bringing their luxurious lifestyles to the playa.
I can believe some of this, but not all of it. The Board of Directors information presented is definitely incomplete and I think this is a large enough topic that it deserves its own post. How is it even remotely legal for someone on a non-profit board to be profiteering from that non-profit?
So the question of did the commodification camps that were so horrible on K street get early entry and tickets from the distributed group sale has been completely ignored. This was a question I really wanted answered and seems like since we will be pissed about the answer you are just going to pretend it wasn’t asked?
When will Jim Tananbaum and his direct involvement with Caravancicle be addressed by the Organization? Not just sidestepped and alluded to? His name needs to be addressed by the Org. Saying his actions don’t effect the BM Project? How can someone be responsible for “spreading burning man culture around the world” when they setup a camp at the actual Burning Man event that blatantly disregards the majority of the 10 principles?
Just (co)modify the theme to smoke and mirrors… Because that’s what this blog/event is all about!
Pay for experience camps are totally against our principles..but are not going to be excluded… Huh? This communication seems to be a lot of heat, but no light.
It’s nice to see this information, some of which is actually new and informative. But even with months to prepare, it’s not especially satisfying.
I don’t see any policy changes that address exclusivity–apparently, as long as a camp acts “neighborly” by not actively annoying the neighbors, they can have all the security guards, velvet ropes, and wristbands they want. Such camps are hardly radically inclusive.
I also find the board of directors response completely inadequate. Very specific allegations were made and simply ignored.
There’s also no mention of penalties. If a camp lies about its intentions and violates policies (new and old), what happens? Does the camp and its attendees get ejected? Apparently not. Bad camps can re-form with new names each year, and even flagrant violators can return with none the wiser. At least if they and their guests got ejected, they’d suffer some, and the guests might not inclined to take that route again.
When will Jim Tananbaum and his direct involvement with Caravancicle be addressed by the Organization? Not just sidestepped and alluded to? His name needs to be addressed by the Org. Saying his actions don’t effect the BM Project? How can someone be responsible for “spreading burning man culture around the world” when they setup a camp at the actual Burning Man event that blatantly disregards the majority of the 10 principles?
Burning Man Board Member Jim Tananbaum’s plug and play camp is a grievous violation of what the community stands for. The idea that you could be making money at burning man, while also on the board, is an inherent conflict of interest.
There are no transparent records of how much the burning man organization makes, or what the board members make, just how much they spend – keeping the most important facts in the dark.
Larry undoubtably loves this arrangement. Pretty understandable why you would make a long text post trying to lull the reader to sleep while you simultaneously try to justify the transgressions.
LEMUR says:
December 3, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Too little, too late, too out of touch and not nearly mindful enough, Larry.
This post of yours, while great that you finally spoke, doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the damage that has been done.
Speak wild eyed about the great glorious Five Year plan… and miss the meat of the issue.
Sad burner says:
December 3, 2014 at 8:43 pm
True the 10 Principles are not the 10 Commandments, however, We The People of BRC insist that the powers that be respect and honor our community ethos when they are chumming with the same people compromising/ruining/gentrifying our communities outside of BRC. We are fearful the same thing is happening on the playa and not only under watchful eye of the org but with the orgs assistance! Allowing a board member to sell VIP packaged experiences and saving tickets for the wealthy is shameful to this community.
We are not asking the org to create and enforce more rules, we are asking you to honor the 10 Principles and this thing you created long ago. We’re asking you to respect the community that helped make BM what it is by not favoring the people who have more money. This will ruin BM and the people that actually care about it will stop going. Please don’t be a 10 Principle Flip Flopper because the cool rich kids are now buying into all this. Imagine the MOOP!!
I don’t really care if someone wants to build an RV fort and guard the entrances. It makes them look really, really ridiculous…but hey, it’s a free playa.
I care about ticket-holding individuals brought to Burning Man as employees who have to do whatever an on-playa boss commands, or else their lodging, pay, and survival supplies will be withheld. A lot of work happens at Burning Man, but it seems that few grasp the significance of totally commodifying a person out there. It’s not the same as splitting up camp duty shifts, and it’s bringing in the exact money/power dynamic that most of us are trying to escape for a week.