BMorg Finally Wakes Up To Culture Disaster: Is It Too Late?

steveouttrim (60)in #cryptobeast • 5 years ago (edited)

Image: Business Insider, 2015

Ticket prices have gone up to $1400.

To distract us from that, there's a huge blog post by Burning Man's CEO Marian Goodell Cultural Course Correcting saying that after listening to several thousand people's responses to a survey, they've learned that some Burners have concerns that Principles like "Radical Self Reliance" seem to be getting left by the wayside as the event catapults to celebrity superstardom.

As CEO of the nonprofit Burning Man Project, I do a lot of listening. People enthusiastically share their Burning Man experiences, ideas, and concerns with me. Lately, participants have been talking about some alarming changes in the culture of Burning Man in Black Rock City, and their speculation as to who and what is causing them...
After Black Rock City 2018, our Communications Team compiled examples of commodification and exploitation of Black Rock City and Burning Man culture. The report is 55 pages long. We’ve been observing some troubling trends for a few years, but this report stunned me.

We have been sounding the culture alarm here for 7 years now, and so have many other Burners. Finally that message has filtered its way through the self-absorbed BMorg holocracy to the people at the top.

The solution? Keep VIP tickets, but increase their price even further, to $1400. Reduce the number of low-income tickets. Only offer 23,000 tickets (less than 1 in 3) to the general public, while beefing up the ~~Directed Group Sale~~ World's Biggest Guest List to more than half the total tickets.

Here's the 2019 ticket distribution.

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Even with the price increase and all taxes and fees, it doesn't get up to last year's event revenue. Seems to be millions of dollars of stuff that's not ice or coffee being sold out there, either that or thousands more tickets.

Note that every number is "approximately" and they have now admitted they oversell the festival by perhaps 7,000 tickets a year. So how "approximate" the limitation of 4000 VIP tickets is may never be known: seriously, the government is redacting that information in response to FOIA requests. How many VIP tickets Burning Man sells is a state secret...ponder that.

The camp "Humano" was named and shamed as having too much money and too many women who were both good looking and bored looking at the same time. Tickets to their hotel rooms were going for up to $100,000, and allegedly came with entertainment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/9edj65/do_not_place_humano_the_tribe_camp_next_year/

They had the classic "fortress camp" layout, that would have stood out like a sore thumb at Burning Man 1998.

Read the full story at Mashable

A lengthy Reddit thread devoted to Humano features various camp neighbors accusing them of "ruining multiple blocks" with MOOP and leaving trailers in areas zoned for other camps. There are also allegations that Humano's packages were priced to include the companionship of multiple female models.
Mashable was also shown unmet requests for refunds from Humano attendees who paid upwards of $130,000 for a stay in a luxury RV and didn't get what they bargained for.
And all this may be just the tip of the iceberg of bad camps. "There are a dozen other camps that have been sent warnings," Goodell wrote.

[Source: Mashable]

Burning Man Board members Jim Tananbaum and Chip Conley have previously attracted scrutiny and criticism for their opulent, exclusive, multi-million dollar luxury camps.

See this inside look at a Fancy Camp from 2015.

The #HumanoTheTribe Instagram hashtag sure has some purdy ladies. Maybe banning them is not such a smart idea. If these Instagram models are using Burning Man to promote a product, it's hard to tell what that is because they're not wearing very much of anything. I can't see any brand names. I say comp them all VIP tickets. These pictures explain why Burning Man tickets are worth $1400 more than Marian's blog post did.