Tag Archives: utopia

Aug 26 2022

Back Once Again With The Renegade Master

The Teapot, by Kyonica Von Houten – placed on a trailer to comply with BLM regulations. Photo: Kyonica Von Houten. Source: Black Rock Renegade

Best of luck to everyone attending the official Burning Man Commodification Man event this year. Look out for monkeypox! Hopefully everyone in the Orgy Dome is max-boosted and fully butt-masked at all times.

Burning Man hasn’t happened for the last couple of years…officially. In fact it has happened, and every account we’ve heard from those who attended the last two decentralized & decommodified burns said burning without the Org was even better than Burning with them – and the $250,000 hotel room camps that their leadership inspired [see Plug-n-Play Goes All The Way…to the Top of the Pyramid, A Sherpa’s Tale, Radical Sherpa Reliance, JT Finally Speaks]

Here’s what Burning Man looked like in 2021, without the Org:

Just like the last couple of years, Renegade Man is free once again, and completely decentralized. This time it starts on Labor Day, just North of the Commodification Man site. There are no tickets, organizers, or purposes. Yet there is a big fuck off glowy Man, portapotties, and all the other accoutrements of an epic Burn. Only: without the Org telling everyone who’s in and who’s out, who can Plug-n-Play in hotel camps next to them and who gets banished to the Outer Rim just for attending Renegade Man last year.

We hear some of the major art cars are very nervous about attending Renegade Man, fearing they will be punished by BMorg if they do; while at the same time there are Billionaire Burners who have their own Utopian visions who could care less about the rules of the Org. Sounds like all the ingredients for a fun time, with many less of the ingredients that can take away fun times.

If you make it all the way through to the other side of the Temple burn, congratulations: you managed to do more than 70% of your fellow Burners this year. Many didn’t make it past Monday, or show up at all. Now it’s Labor Day, what are you gonna do? Ready to go back to reality yet? Or do you really need just.one.more.dance…

Whether you partied like a rock star librarian, bailed out early, or didn’t even go to Burning Man at all…you might be interested in Black Rock Renegade’s free After Party, out past the trash fence. Join their Facebook group, if you have an art project that would need resources to bring out there hit them up for crowdfunding…there are definitely some high rollers involved, and the more art (cars) the better.

Here are the instructions from Black Rock Renegade on how to find the event, using the What3Words navigation app:

As a decentralized non-event, the exact location of the Renegade cannot entirely be defined either, however, some of it is expected to take place North of the Playa in the vicinity of what3words location fostering.stun.hopping or GPS coordinates [40.95161, -119.09563] (Google maps). For good form, we recommend avoiding camping at what3words location annual.harmless.substitute.

Some folks have created a “directory” map for dispersed campers wishing to indicate where they intend to camp.

There will also be a gated event temporarily privatizing 77% of the Playa and the 8 Miles Playa entrance, but the 12 Miles entrance will be open to individuals “traveling through, without stopping, the public closure area on the west or east playa roads” (section J.(1)(a) of the closure order) – see our info on getting there.

For more information see blackrockrenegade.org

Flashback 2016

The Scandals – Further Details

Plug-n-play has got out of control in recent years, ever since BMorg made a movie complaining about it called Spark. They moved almost immediately from throwing Playa)'(Skool under the bus for having RVs in their camp to promoting bus tour packages and concierge culture. We’ve seen the escalation of executive luxury from Chip Conley’s catered celebration camp to Billionaire’s Row with wristband-only cocktail bars and $54,000 a “head” swinger camps. Burning Man’s own airline now offers a VIP helicopter taxi service. Even the cops are cashing in, with BLM-branded art installations, multi-million dollar air-conditioned compounds and helicopter joyrides for their families to lavish dinners. We’ve had a War on EDM which saw long-time participants given the cold shoulder and resulted in the creation of a DMZ. And all of this is happening while Reno becomes the latest tax haven for oligarchs fleeing the Panama Papers scandal.

in 2022 at Commodified Man there will only be MORE plug and plays paying even more money. Some of the things we’ve heard are outrageous…but we’re sworn to secrecy. You’ll be able to spot them though…let us know if you see any BMorg big-wigs there enjoying the 7 star hospitality

Whatever happened to the new 2019, green, emissions-free Burning Man, anyway? World domination, as planned from the hot tubs at Esalen? Time is running out…maybe decentralized Renegade Man will lead the way by Leaving Less Trace than centralized Commodified Man does. Last year they created a carbon-neutral Burning Man out of battery powered drones.

Featured image: Josh Wolf, via brokeassstuart.com

Feb 5 2018

Burners Building Crypto-Utopia in Puerto Rico

Brock Pierce is perhaps the most famous person in the world of cryptocurrency. He got married at Burning Man, and has much more time for Burners than civilians. He and his friends are living in a Monastery and building a permanent city in Puerto Rico called Sol: a Phoenix rising from the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

See the whole interview with Brock and Tai Lopez here.

The New York Times picked up this story:

SAN JUAN, P.R. — They call what they are building Puertopia. But then someone told them, apparently in all seriousness, that it translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin. So they are changing the name: They will call it Sol.

Dozens of entrepreneurs, made newly wealthy by blockchain and cryptocurrencies, are heading en masse to Puerto Rico this winter. They are selling their homes and cars in California and establishing residency on the Caribbean island in hopes of avoiding what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their growing fortunes, some of which now reach into the billions of dollars.

And these men — because they are almost exclusively men — have a plan for what to do with the wealth: They want to build a crypto utopia, a new city where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public, to show the rest of the world what a crypto future could look like. Blockchain, a digital ledger that forms the basis of virtual currencies, has the potential to reinvent society — and the Puertopians want to prove it.

For more than a year, the entrepreneurs had been searching for the best location. After Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure in September and the price of cryptocurrencies began to soar, they saw an opportunity and felt a sense of urgency.

So this crypto community flocked here to create its paradise. Now the investors are spending their days hunting for property where they could have their own airports and docks. They are taking over hotels and a museum in the capital’s historic section, called Old San Juan. They say they are close to getting the local government to allow them to have the first cryptocurrency bank.

Read the rest at the New York Times.

This sounds like a great use of Burner power.

Why devote a year’s worth of energy to building something that is destroyed in minutes? I mean, don’t get me wrong, that can be fun the first few times you do it. Is that all there is though, the pinnacle of Self-Expression is destruction? What about other values, Civic Responsibility, Communal Effort, Immediacy? We can take all the creative and artistic talent, brainpower, networks, and newly minted crypto capital of the Burner community and use that to do permanent good, helping others in need. Gifting things that make a lasting impact to many.

BMorg might tell you “but that’s what we do, Burners Without Borders”! Unfortunately the most recent financial data we have says that they spent less than $8000 on these projects in 2015 and 2016, years in which they took in more than $80 million.

At this point the chances of Decommodification, Inc and their ever-expanding year-round crew saving the world are pretty slim. They would have to become something they quite clearly are not. Look at Flysalen, 2 years to figure out a vision for that, hundreds of people plotting world domination in the hot tub at Esalen…still nothing.  Burners, on the other hand? We know how to get shit done. We can make the world a better place. Many of us already are, like SHELTERCOIN. Puerto Rico needs our help, there are many other disaster-devastated destinations. Why destroy stuff when you can rebuild homes and restore communities?

Or, we can just do the same hedonistic debauched thing every year in the same way, the only thing changing is ticket prices going up and lines getting longer while the quality of the crowd goes down. Eat, sleep, Burn, repeat, forever and ever and ever…

 

Nov 4 2015

Shaft, Unicorns, and Morning Gloryville

Shaft the Unicorn. Image: Vice

Shaft the Unicorn. Image: Vice

We keep hearing from BMOrg’s spokespeople how the dusty desert rave is making the world a better place and transforming lives around the planet. It’s good to see some evidence of this happening. First we had Jared Leto bringing Burning Man to SOHO:

Image: New York Magazine

Image: New York Magazine

Now VICE brings us a documentary about Shaft, who was inspired by going to Burning Man events to self-identify as a unicorn.

When a charismatic former alcoholic named Shaft had his life changed by Burning Man, he realized that he actually identifies as a unicorn. No longer able to face the monotony of work and life in the real world, he decided to form a polyamorous and hedonistic movement with other like-minded unicorns.

Donning glittery horns and galloping through London’s streets, Shaft’s unicorns set about trying to create a free-love utopia.

But as the unicorn revolution begins to clash with the realities of life and love, some of the “glampede” became disillusioned, and Shaft’s reasons for starting this whole thing came into question.

Is this the hedonistic, free love revolution we were promised in the 60s? Or is it as fake as the unicorn horns they wear, a desperate and clever ploy by Shaft to escape his own inner loneliness by starting a cult?

It’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.

The girl’s art around 7:30 is priceless.

Shaft says “it’s the Burning world that I got all my ideas in life from”. He means his ideas about polyamory, partying, and magical transpecies identification. He also says “I’m a massive drug addict”, with Ketamine bed parties being his particular preferred indulgence.

So here’s one way to measure the impact of Burner culture on the world. Count unicorn horns, wherever you go.

Meanwhile, Laser Unicorns brings us this surprise hit: