70,000 people, all quarantined together in a fucking mudpit, rumor has it a highly contagious virus is spreading through the festival grounds and festival goers are walking around barefoot in the mood and are going to get all sort of nasty foot diseases. There’s food and water rationing in effect and really the only co conclusion I can get from this is that somebody is probably gonna die from this.
Like since covid I think we as a society realized but haven’t yet actually accepted is that large social gatherings are a societal danger and we shouldn’t be doing them for fun. Yes I never went out in college, my friend group consisted of my dnd group, normalize that instead of super spreader crowd crusher mass gatherings. My opinion on this is the same with guns and cars, abolition would be a good thing. Now I’m a realist, the people want their treats, sometimes a mass gathering like a protest is necessary. Can we at least all agree that there needs to be some change in the way we as a society do huge fucking events like this?
In conclusion burning man sucks, hippies aren’t communist.
You had me until here.
So much of this is
no public health care
no emergency medical services
degraded utilities infrastructure causing a spike in sanitation problems
heat waves driving droughts which exacerbate all of the above
The idea that the problem is “large social gatherings” and not “failing social services and infrastructure” seems heavily misplaced.
Its like looking at the Superdome during Katrina and concluding the problem is pro-sports.
The whole point of burning man is to go somewhere that has no infrastructure. If they organised the same festival in Central Park, you’d have no issues evacuating 70k people.
It’s just gotten too big and it should’ve never been allowed to grow past a few 100 people.
The idea is to build up something from scratch in the desert and then burn it all down and return to nature.
But what was originally a primitivist art show for regional pros - with a legacy community leadership and social expectations and some real medical and utility infrastructure - has dissolved in the face of a bunch of Silicon Valley party boys who just want a big rave in the desert.
Even at a few hundred, they’d have the same problems as the event is currently configured.