My recent take on Burning Man caused such indignant outrage on Facebook that I felt compelled to re-post on Starve Magazine. First, some context: in 2025, I finally checked Burning Man off my bucket list after 20 years. I met many well-meaning, lovely people. However, having attended the UN Open Source conference just months prior, I made the mistake of expecting a similar level of intellectual and humanitarian rigor. Instead, I found a massive drinking and drugging party. I am never going back, but I definitely want to go to Rainbow Gatherings again.
I’m writing this because when people online claim Burning Man is a Mad Max-style utopia where everyone helps each other – ya no. So many people leave the festival early that they have an entire bus line called “The Burnout Express.”
The Illusion of Community
The “Radical Self-Reliance” mantra is often a cover for a lack of basic empathy. For example: if you forget a bowl or a spoon, you are screwed. Despite the abundance of food, no one carries spares. A minor oversight quickly becomes a crisis.
As an older person with a fused spine and a hip replacement, I found the “disability camp” to be a hollow gesture. I’ve shared the email they sent me; they have almost no resources, and you have to walk several miles just to reach the camp in the first place.
My safety warning: If you have health issues that prevent you from walking two miles while carrying 20+ pounds of gear, do not go alone. There is no actual support for the vulnerable, and you cannot count on strangers to step in.
The Idiocracy of the “Eco-Resort”
The “Idiocracy” element is most apparent in the environmental and economic hypocrisy:
- The Carbon Footprint: Over 18 million pounds of gear is hauled into the desert via fossil-fueled vehicles. Attendees fly in on private jets or travel from Europe with e-bikes, then retreat to RVs with industrial air conditioners and gas generators.
- The Plastic Crisis: 350,000 plastic jugs of water are brought in because nothing can be purchased or sourced locally.
- The Waste Stream: Tens of thousands of tents and sleeping bags are discarded annually because it’s cheaper than shipping them home. From Gerlach to Reno, dumpsters overflow with “stealth trash,” yet the festival provides almost no economic benefit to the local towns. There are a million rules about what you *can’t* do with your trash and not a single workflow for what you should actually do. It could provide well-paying union jobs in Gerlach but instead, they proudly brand their wage theft as non-commerce.
- I stayed with a camp that offered composting, but we closed that down early so by the time everyone hauled their compost to us the last two days, we had closed it down.
Leadership and Labor
While the Board of Directors pays themselves nearly a million dollars a year, they expect everyone else to work for free. Unless you’re in a fancy camp where people are judged for paying chefs a few pennies to cook for everyone. On my flight, I met a band paying their own way to perform for “exposure.” Meanwhile, the organization cut the Burners Without Borders arts program. And they’re total bastards about copyright.
Then there is the safety and eco irony: we burn giant wooden structures, pumping pollution into the air, yet the medical response teams don’t even carry rape kits.
The Model for a Broken World
The most “Idiocracy” moment is hearing people ask: “How do we make the rest of the world more like Burning Man?”
Really? A drunken festival crawling with cops that excludes the poor, the elderly, and the disabled? A world that adds millions of pounds of trash to landfills while LARPing as an eco-paradise? Burning Man isn’t a blueprint for the future; it’s an eco-disaster refugee camp for the wealthy to pretend to be low-resourced for a week.
A Culture of Silence
When you bring up these issues, the “loving-kindness” crowd turns into vicious trolls. In this Idiocracy, criticism is forbidden.
The festival is in decline. It didn’t sell out last year, and the reality of the danger of the extreme weather is setting in. Last year, workers hospitalized during the setup storm were reportedly stuck with the bill for their own emergency medevac.
In an age of economic decline and a desperate need for labor rights and support for the vulnerable, we need to have a serious discussion about how problematic the idea of a “Burning Man Utopia” has become.
What You Actually Want is a Rainbow Gathering
And we also need to celebrate the Rainbow Family – a group that has been around for 50 years, never charged anyone, and where absolutely every person there WILL help you. I was there during a cold snap and there were people who worked around the clock to make sure people weren’t freezing in their tents. People who are poor and in hiding are embraced, included and supported. Massive teams of athletic and stone-cold sober people are working their ass off, digging latrines, cooking and carrying giant vats of vegan stew through the forest. The drum circles are better than any rave, alcohol is prohibited, and RVs and cars are simply not allowed.
But because it’s not a company that makes money, they don’t advertise, and don’t have arts grants, they don’t get press and it’s just not as well known as Burning Man. But if you really want to meet people who want to build a new world, that’s where you’ll find your people.