Anti-Burning Man's topics - tribe.net

I see you've all come around!

blackrockcity — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:54:18 GMT

Last post: November 11, 2007
Today's Date: May 25, 2009

Conclusion: Nobody's against Burning Man, any more! Whoo! You've all seen the light!

Big meetup at Center Camp, this year! Who's coming?

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 4 replies

Finally!

Suzan-a-Thon — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:57:51 GMT

Why spend upwards of $150 to go to an environmentally hostile place to act up/out/"wild" when you could get together with people whose company you know you enjoy for same & spend that money on more drugs? Wanna come to my house??

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

Poll: I just wanted to learn about what people think about burningman

partytrap — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 01:21:50 GMT

I'm curious: How many of you folks, both pro and negatory on the burner experience, have been down to Black Rock City in the late Summertime.

[from babblefish poser->burner dictionary: How many of you dumbshits have actually gone to Burning Man before posting some of your uninformed statements.]

I know.... I know.... you already know what its about, so you don't need to go. Trust me, I believe you believe that.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 38 replies

Death Valley '69

Savta — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:32:43 GMT

Sonic Youth new what sad fucking BM is all about:

Groooooahhh!

Coming down
Sadie, i love it
now now now
death valley '69

you're right
you're right
you're right
you're right
you're right you were right
i was on the wrong track
we're deep in the valley
how deep in the gulley
and now in the canyon
and now in the canyon
out in the yonder way out in the yonder
she started to holler
she started to holler
i didn't wanna
i didn't wanna
i didn't wanna
i didn't wanna
but she started to holler
so i had to hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it
deep in the valley
in the trunk of an old car
in the back of a chevvy
i got sand in my mouth you got sand in your mouth
and you got sun in your eyes i got sun in your eyes
blind blinded
and you wanted to get there
but i couldn't go faster i wanted to get there
but you couldn't go faster
so i started to hit it you couldn't go faster
so i started to hit it
i started to hit it hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it
hit it

coming down
Sadie, i love it
now now now
death valley '69
death valley '69
death valley '69
death valley '69
ieieieioooooaoaoaieeih!

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

Let it be said, Burning Man r00ls, private msg, don't read

Savta — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 09:11:27 GMT

Dear Ben

I couldn't figure out this tribe thing how to post private so I hope nowun else reads this.

So like, I think it is stupid that you have this anti bruning man tribe, BENNY DEAR. Ur kinda hawt though. So like I will ResP3ct yoo. But this must be put to an end. We Burners are true to our nature. We like the playa and the playa likes us and we like to get nekked in the alkaline dust, rub our parts in it and screw eachother while munching LSD. And that is bad why exactly?!?!! Omfg lol. Reckless hedonism is not bad, geesus. Screw community work, I hate local people here, cuz they like don't know shit about our ways.

I think you don't like understand how deep we go, what you can't fathom you resent. I think you anti burners tribe members are evildoers. Us burning manners got depth and trueness. So there. And don't bother calling me a troll, cuz I aint. So you know. I'd still like to date you though.

P.S. I don't like your bad attitude towards pitbulls, they got feelings too.
To be continued...

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

Idiocy

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:51:43 GMT

So, Mr. Antagonism posted yesterday, and I re-read last year's little interaction with Cable, and, being unable to read dates, I responded like it was all new. But my post ROCKED. So I guess I've got that going for me.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 1 reply

Satans Birthday

MChurch — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:08:31 GMT

Glad I stopped going in 2,000......

Burning Man 2001: Satan's Birthday Party by James Whisler
For those who are as yet unfamiliar with the Burning Man Festival, it is like nothing you've ever seen (and hopefully never will see). Founded on the Summer Solstice (a witchcraft holiday) in 1986 by a man named Larry Harvey it has grown from its humble beginnings of a small gathering of friends on Baker Beach in San Francisco to a week long festival (ending Labor Day weekend) that has been relocated to the Nevada Black Rock Desert, forming a temporary city. Boasting two daily newspapers and an unbelievable 40+ radio stations, Black Rock City's population this year was estimated at about 30,000 inhabitants from every state in the union and quite a few foreign countries. Harvey claims that the Burning Man and the Black Rock City phenomenon originated from a creative way to ceremonialize getting over a broken relationship combined with an unprecedented social experiment in the unrestricted self-expression of art and life (later on you'll see some of that 'artwork' ). One thing that he emphatically denies is that it is pagan based. I found this to be a laughable second-rate cover story. To me, the Burning Man origins obviously parallels ancient pagan celebrations when Druids burned humans in wicker cages as sacrifices to their gods at least eight times a year, on their eight major holy days, one of those of course being the Summer Solstice or Litha, a Celtic fire festival.

http://poweredbychrist.homestead.com/BurningMan.html

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

Aim new heer

Savta — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 09:12:27 GMT

Ai'd laik 2 intr0djuse maiself cuz eye djust j0ined. I write powetree.
So iz NE-one gowing to da burning man? Diz iz de BM tribe, no? Cuz aim goowing cuz I hev a burning deeseyer to get nekked.

S0, NE takerz? Word up!

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 1 reply

"No Friends With Burning Man User Pics" tribe looking for members

Mike — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:47:39 GMT

Hey, looking around Tribe I had an idea to start a tribe for people who have no friends whose user pics were taken at Burning Man... only to stumble onto this tribe 15 minutes later. SO I thought I'd proffer the invite to anyone who might qualify.

So far I haven't found a single person.

Mike

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 4 replies

they are

costin — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 05:26:42 GMT

http://www.nativemovement.org/march/

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

it burns when I pee

Funk — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:49:22 GMT

I don't know what all this "burning man" stuff is about. I just know that it burns when I pee. I thought this tribe was about burning men like me.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 2 replies

Here's some rope, now go...

partytrap — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:00:21 GMT

Long time, no write, as they say. I've been busy sand blasting the playa dust out of my parts, but the excavation is nearing completion and I thought I'd come back with something for you all to enjoy. This is a letter written by Larry Harvey (the founder of Burningman and its public face). It was sent out to the regional Burningman groups to address inter-burner discussions about the role of commerce within the organization and its art foundation. I think he addresses a lot of your general criticisms very directly.

One of my favorite Lines in the letter is:
It has also been pointed out by critics of Burning Man that the event itself involves a near riot of consumption, a kind of potlatch extravaganza that symbolically culminates in the ritual sacrifice of material goods.

Read on, my sweet... and taste the textures on your travels.
with love,
cable

-----
Dear Regionals,

The following is in response to controversy concerning the use of the Jack Rabbit Speaks[the Burningman newletter] to promote a fund raising effort on behalf of the Black Rock Arts Foundation. More broadly, it’s a meditation on the meaning of commere and its relationship to culture. I hope that it contains ideas that will lead to further discussion about how Burning Man, considered as a social movement, might begin to influence the greater world.

Burning Man has never opposed or condemned commerce. Civilization and commerce go hand in hand. Even hunter-gatherers trade goods with other tribes. The spread of culture has historically been concomitant with the expansion of commerce. One example is the Silk Road that once linked the lands of the Far East to Europe. This passage of goods involved innumerable commercial transactions, and the benefit that this conferred on people in its path involved much more than monetary gain or simple consumer gratification. It generated a traffic in ideas: an enlargement of every form of culture and a greater and more philosophic vision of what it might mean to be human. To simply condemn commercial enterprise is crudely Ludite. Unless one would prefer to subsist on roots and grubs and remain utterly ignorant of the surrounding world, I don’t suppose that many people could embrace such a doctrine.

This observation can also be applied to many of the circumstances surrounding Burning Man and Black Rock City. We sell tickets to our event. Obviously, this is a commercial transaction. Without the revenue that these sales generate, the construction of anything remotely resembling a city would be impossible. Likewise, most participants in Burning Man spend far greater sums of money as they prepare for our event than they expend on the purchase of tickets. It has also been pointed out by critics of Burning Man that the event itself involves a near riot of consumption, a kind of potlatch extravaganza that symbolically culminates in the ritual sacrifice of material goods.

The products of our consumer society are spectacularly displayed in Black Rock City. Not only are such goods necessary for survival in an environment that lacks resources, in many cases these materials are also used as a medium of self-expression. Although a part of our ethos expresses a serious and meditated respect for the natural environment, and though it is an essential part of our mission to provide participants with an unmediated exposure to the forces of nature, we are not a back to the Earth movement and have never looked upon our city as a self-sustaining commune. Every single aspect of Black Rock City, apart from the barren desert floor on which it stands, is transported to this site from somewhere else, and most of this material was purchased in the marketplace.

Some people have said that these seeming contradictions in a non-commercial ethos are evidence of deep naivete or demonstrate hypocrisy. I believe that this is due to a confusion of words and their meanings. When people assert that something is too commercial or has been commercialized, they do not mean to say that commerce is necessarily bad. Instead, they are expressing the feeling that something essential, -- something that should not be bought or sold --
has been commodified. This is why we have always been careful to use the words commodify and decommodify. Our annual event in the desert is meant to demonstrate what can happen when human interactions cease to be mediated and limited by market transactions and are governed, instead, by the unconditional passage of gifts.

Until quite recently, all societies have provided many different sorts of rites, rituals and sacred spaces. Set apart from the secular world of daily life, they are intended to rehearse ceertain core values of a given culture that are felt to be unconditional. They provide a sense of immediate being and belonging that cannot be measured or created by transactions in a marketplace. They furnish people with a sense of spiritual identity, an experience that the anthpologist, Victor Turner, called “communitus”, and I think that Burning Man and the many regional burns that have sprung up across the country do just that. Yet I think it is important to also remember that Black Rock City is not, has never been, and never could be a utopia. No one could conduct their everyday life as we live in the desert. People who accuse the Burning Man Project of commercialism frequently mistake the spirit of our culture for the letter of a law; they are transforming it into a puritanical ideology that demonizes any form of commerce or capitalism (unless, of course, this takes a form that happens to supply them with a living).

However, if our ethos, this new philosophy of life we are continuing to invent together, is to ultimately mean anything at a societal scale, we must begin to find ways to bring what we have leaned back into the world -- and already I see many new initiatives occurring. Witness our community’s spontaneous disaster relief efforts in Biloxi, Mississippi <http://burningman.com/blackrockcity_yearround/misc/katrina.html> which the Burning Man Project is actively facilitating, or consider the activities of the Black Rock Arts Foundation <http://www.blackrockarts.org>. Such acts of pure gift giving represent a radical insertion of our culture back into the realm of ordinary life. Yet there are also other efforts taking place in our community that represent attempts to carefully adapt our culture to the way we really lead our lives. Several recent trips I’ve made to our precocious community in Seattle have provided me with one example of how this might be done.

I met with community members who have started enterprises in Seattle such as the Static Factory. This is a restaurant, a bar, a community gathering place, and a photo and recording studio. Furthermore, as a business, it is capitalized. When I spoke with those who organized this enterprise (they are some of the same people who helped create The Machine at this year’s event), I learned they had secured loans from other burners – but on somewhat novel terms. Those who could afford to lend the organizers money were not necessarily normal investors. These people were not breathing down their necks expecting fat returns. No pressure was being placed on them to do only those things that would net a maximum profit. Instead, they were contributing to an endeavor that was culture bearing (this presence of a culture bearing function also happens to be the chief criterion we use when selecting goods for sale via our Internet marketplace). This enterprise provided the local burner community with a much needed meeting place, a cultural intersection, and a space in which to create new art.

In other words, this was a hybrid effort using worldly skills and economic tools, but one created very much in the spirit of what our culture values. This enterprise did not use branding to cash in on Burning Man. It manifested the identity that Burning Man creates. In fact, as I found out, it represented the organic outgrowth of a theme camp. Much of the labor needed to create it was sweat equity contributed by the community that used it. It blended tools of business seamlessly with the cooperative and collaborative ethos that everyone had learned at Burning Man. I really don’t believe that anyone who is involved in this endeavor is expecting to get rich, but they could expect to profit from it in the form of income. If this is evil, then I think we might do well to parlay with the devil. I suspect that models such as this could help to change the way the world does business. If there is an enemy that we must face, it is consumerism that is divorced from both community and culture, and not simple commerce.

Likewise, the Black Rock Arts Foundation, the non-profit that we’ve founded, is also raising money, and we’re doing this in worldly ways. We are looking high and low for funds. With a current staff of only two paid people and a very hard working board, we intend to insert examples of our culture back into the very heart of civic life around the world. Lately, working in our own backyard in San Francisco, BRAF is erecting monumental interactive art throughout the city, and early in November we will raise Michael Christian’s beloved sculpture, Flock, in front of City Hall (And -- who knows?-- maybe this exposure will help him to sell this piece, thus enabling him to make more art. After several years of creating some of the most magnificent art that Black Rock City has ever seen, I doubt if profiting from his calling is likely to corrupt him).

Furthermore, on a very personal note, I happen to live seven blocks away from the temple that David Best and the Temple Crew (some of whom are now hard at work in Biloxi) recently created in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley with the aid of a grant from the Black Rock Arts Foundation. I have watched my local neighborhood come alive and coalesce around it. People respond to it precisely as they respond in Black Rock City. The head of the San Francisco Art Commission has said publicly that in two decades she has never witnessed a response like this to art – but you and I have, and now we are beginning to bring this experience home to the so-called mainstream. Our goal is to make San Francisco a model for other cities, to furnish burners everywhere with an example and a lot of practical political advice concerning just how much they might achieve by using worldly tools.

In order to accomplish this and even greater goals, the foundation is quite willing to accept money from anyone as long as such a contribution doesn’t interfere with its mission to promote interactive art that connects and extends real community beyond the boundaries of Black Rock City. How far, you may ask, are we willing to go? Would we let a corporation use the name of Burning Man? Most certainly not, That would commodify a thing that can’t be bought and won’t be sold. Would we let Exon spread a banner across an artwork and hype it in commercials? I think that would also undermine our goals. Would we accept a donation, whoever might contribute it, and thank that donor on the Black Rock Art Foundation’s website? Would the Project use the JRS to promote a cruise that will benefit the foundation – one given by a trusted vendor, a burner run business that has already made contributions to BRAF? Frankly, I don’t see how either of these actions could compromise the experience that BRAF funded art immediately provides to people. To denounce BRAF or the Burning Man Project for raising money to generate experiences that can lead to the authentic generation of culture in decomodified environments is to fetishize an anti-commercial ideology that we have never embraced.

Given the fact that I spend much of my time lobbying politicians and pouring over business plans in order to craft social environments and projects that inspire spontaneous outpourings of community spirit such as we have witnessed in Biloxi, I will admit to all of you that I view some of the controversy that surrounds our new initiatives with more than a little irony. Using the tools of the world, using them, in fact, more efficiently and for a better purpose than the world does isn’t selling out.

Sincerely,

Larry Harvey

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

my new joke

glitternoir — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 03:35:00 GMT

Q: How many Burners does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None, because on the Playa there is no electricity, not to mention no plumbing or personal hygeine products

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 4 replies

What I Did Over Burning Man Weekend

glitternoir — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 00:36:20 GMT

I think I'll spend next weekend cruising around in my detailed 6-cylinder American sedan with the air conditioner blasted, yakking on my cel phone. Then I'll hit the spa for a full-body exfoliation, manicure, facial and steam bath. Then I'll go home and turn on all of the lights in the house and have a juicy steak dinner whilst listening to Chopin on the stereo and sipping well chilled Pinot Blanc. Then maybe go out to a club and enjoy dancing on an empty, airy dance floor devoid of patchouli-soaked people wearing goggles and handmade rubber clothing that hasn't ever been washed.
No, really.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 5 replies

they have returned

nikiaurora — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 21:35:01 GMT

Sitting at Pergolesi yesterday I was subjected to an account of Burning Man from a young woman and her friend.

"So like, I hung out with this girl who had this dangling labia piercing. She wasn't wearing any clothes, and I just kept staring at it. It was cool and all, but yeah, like, I just kept looking at it, it was like, all she was wearing."
(This she kept repeating to which ever of her friends came by.)

"We like, stayed out and danced all night and did drugs and like rode our bikes around all day and like, looked at cool art and stuff."

"Yeah, we basically did lots of drugs and hung out with cool people."

I am so glad to have distanced myself from the Burning Man culture and the stupidity it has spawned.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 5 replies

Farewell to Anti-Burning Man

glitternoir — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 02:59:28 GMT

It's been fun heckling Burning Man.
But I'm leaving this tribe (and a few others, nothing personal) because I have been hit with the realization that a lot of my energy has been directed in a non-productive way the past several months. I am making a conscious attempt to channel my energy into making things better in the world around me.
This is in no way a judgement of anyone but myself, a girl who has lost her way and wants to leave herself open to the possibilites that manifest on a more clear pathway.
Thank you for the fun.....
I am still annoyed by the whole modernized Burning Man concept.
Ah, the road to recovery is ripe with relapse.....
loves,
eleanoir

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 1 reply

Burning Man Katrina

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 18:56:13 GMT

So, I was lurking through the livejournals of various people I don't know, and almost all of the people coming back from Dood A'Fire had NOTHING to say about the hurricane/disaster/national failure. Assholes. Fucking ignorant self-centered fucking assholes.

On the Burning Man tribe, there is a post about how people on the "playa" (which I always read as playa, in the hip-hop sense, "Don't be a playa-hater"), were making piles of water, etc. to donate to the Red Cross (as though the people in the disaster area don't have enough problems with dirt). Someone else suggested that a percentage of the Flaming Fella proceeds be donated to relief efforts. IF that happens, I will be gratefully surprised.

"Disaster? Oh, yeah. I heard about that. So let me tell you about this HOT NAKED CHICK ON AN ART BIKE that I totally could have made it with if dehydration (you know, just like those people down in the South) hadn't made me physically incapable of getting a boner."

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

Burning Man Newsflash

glitternoir — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 04:10:15 GMT

I just watched the news...the weather was almost 100 degrees, trash littered the whole city, stray people were roaming in search of water, bonfires lined the streets, while heavily armed guards kept watch over the perimeter refusing entrance to people trying to bring in supplies. OH, wait...that's New Orleans.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 0 replies

ride shares....

michelley — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:37:46 GMT

another thing that pisses me off about burners. all the damn people that buy a ticket, yet dont have a fucking ride out to the playa, and wait till the last minute posting on tribe.
seriously, what is up with that? i also love how they want to bum a ride from some freak theyve never met before, but obviously will have so much in common with because they both want to go live in the desert for 10 days.

have your mommy or daddy buy you a car fuckwads.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 2 replies

a nice thought

nikiaurora — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:11:59 GMT

The nicest thing about Burning Man is that all the burners will be out of town for a whole week! That is a significant percent of the Santa Cruz population. I heard a rumor that Saturn Cafe loses money during Burning Man...

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 9 replies

What a load of complete bullshit.

Sat, 30 Jul 2005 11:13:00 GMT

Maybe it was worth the ridiculous price 10+ years ago, but for someone to be compelled to go out to the desert so they might surround themselves with drugged-up yahoos and fuckwits on stilts and in art-cars is totally beyond me.

I'd rather hammer in my own skull - with the claw side. I'd rather stick a cactus up my dick. I'd rather put my arm in an industrial grinder. I'd rather stuff a gallon of ants into my ear canal. I'd rather have a septic eyeball.

I hope you get the point.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 24 replies

Converted

nikiaurora — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 22:07:29 GMT

Twice I went to Burning Man. Sure, it was fun, but I am never going back. It was cool to see some large scale projects, hang with my friends, and meet new people. However, I would rather go camping with my close friends or family than go back to the "good vibes" and huge amount of drug use out there. Most people there started to really piss me off with their pseudo-intellectual views and actions. The only people I ended up really liking were some of the fire dancers from LA. Most "dancers" there have no sense of artistry or danger that can be found in the cheap trill of spinning fire.

I don't find it even necessary to be particularly hateful towards the event- it isn't even worth my thoughts.

posted in Anti-Burning Man - 13 replies

Mandatory Reading

Dave — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:47:12 GMT

I’m new to this discussion. First, thanks for creating the group. The information is good. Most people considering going or not going (or not going again) would garner much from your comments.

I've been 8 (eight) times. I'll go again this year. I have a long list of things I don't like about The Man. Some from some years, others from all years. I'd like to list them in a future post.

To get the subject of this post: I'm asking all the people I know, that go or are thinking of going, to read Anti-Burning Man. It’s important like the Survival Guide is important.

Dave (Have No Playa Name)
San Diego

Anti-Burning Man's topics - tribe.net

I see you've all come around!

Finally!

Poll: I just wanted to learn about what people think about burningman

Death Valley '69

Let it be said, Burning Man r00ls, private msg, don't read

Idiocy

Satans Birthday

Aim new heer

"No Friends With Burning Man User Pics" tribe looking for members

they are

it burns when I pee

Here's some rope, now go...

my new joke

What I Did Over Burning Man Weekend

they have returned

Farewell to Anti-Burning Man

Burning Man Katrina

Burning Man Newsflash

ride shares....

a nice thought

What a load of complete bullshit.

Converted

Mandatory Reading

Its All Been Said Before