|
Too many idiots this year
First of all, I just want to say that I’m having a ton of fun at Burning Man this year — although that probably has more to do with the people that I’m around than with the actual “Burning Man Experience,” because there are also quite a few things that are not going over so well. This is just something one needs to expect when there’s any sort of crowd, especially one that’s 28,000 people strong. And that in itself is most likely the biggest problem of Burning Man. Too many people. Not enough... hmmm... life? Juice? Ah, whatever — there just ain’t enough of it anymore. Too many drunken idiots. Actually, they don’t even have to be drunk, or stoned, or whatever the hell they’re on. Let’s just say too many idiots. Okay, even that’s making it more dramatic than it really is. The real problem is that there are just too many normal people. Of the 28,000 people here this year, I really doubt that any more than 4000 of them are doing anything interesting. And most of what these people are doing isn’t very exciting anyway. Painting themselves blue. Wearing a funny hat. Whooee. Partee. And worse yet: “Let’s get together with mummy and daddy’s money and build a big, loud rave camp. Everyone will hear how cool we are and flock to us like little moths! Word, bro!” This year, we’re pitched in the middle of nowhere between two rave camps. I don’t know if they’re having a contest to see who’s the loudest, but I’d have to call it a tie. And the big deal is, I ain’t a “Mr. Grumpy, rain-on-your-parade”-kind of dude. If people are actually having fun, I might not join in, but I can respect that folks want to get down and funky at Burning Man, even if that ain’t my bag. But the thing is, neither of these camps attract any more than, say 50 people, tops. And 90 percent of the time — yeah, at night — there isn’t anyone there besides the camp occupants, standing around looking at each other, wondering if they should be the first to abandon their camp and look for something more fun to do. Of course, the music continues on, despite the fact that there might be only one dude in the geo-dome. Have you ever tried to sleep next to a rave camp? It’s hard. You wake up again and again because, for chrissakes, it keeps pounding. Earplugs are useless. This shit vibrates. You flutter your eyelids in disbelief, wondering what the hell time it is and then realize — the sun is fucking up. And they’re still playing that goddamn music. Are they human? Do they sleep at all? Or have they fled the scene entirely? Running away in the middle of the night, letting the music blast away. A lone beacon in the desert — a monument to how cool they are. Hell, who knows how much these fools spent on their awfully creative camp? I’m guessing over five grand. Big ass truck, custom geo-dome, wacky lights, not to mention the sound system. Five grand, easy. Jocks, lawyers, frat boys, sorority girls, and corporate fuckheads trying to pass themselves off as progressive hipsters for some evil or sad reason. Normal people who just want to go out to the desert and look at all the crazy people, even though they seem to be a dying breed, much like an endangered species, really — leeching off their creativity and energy, just so they can go back and create a hip marketing scheme that will really impress the youth generation. “You need to buy a big, fat SUV so you can go to a cool place like Burning Man, where cool people, like me, go. I was there, man, it’s like Woodstock ’99, but cooler. I think I saw the Backstreet Boys there, didn’t you? They were doing the hula with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. That was really cool.” Not. |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
