Six Degrees of Separation at Burning Man | Hacker News Reader

Six Degrees of Separation at Burning Man

nautil.us

48 pointszivvy8 comments

> How, after so many years, could Burning Man throw an event of such chaos, and yet leave the desert without a trace?

Pretty simple answer actually, they don't. And a lot of the trash they do take with them they illegally dump in Reno. "Leave no Trace" is just a marketing slogan.

https://www.apnews.com/ab70872567d94e2585d744e676c976f5

https://m.sfgate.com/travel/burningman/article/Burning-Man-g...

"Burning Man’s contract stipulates that no more than 1 square foot of debris per acre can be left behind after the event. The area where a human effigy is burned had nearly 7 square feet of trash after the event, according to the BLM."

1 acre = 43560 square feet, and over the 7 square miles of the event (= 4480 acres) that was the peak measurement? Get real.

"attendees — returned from a week of self-discovery and partying on the 'playa' — have the propensity to dump trash illegally"

I think you need to be fair and compare against the mess left at similar events.

Although it seems obvious Burning Man should provide trash bins - rubbish is generated in large amounts and they should accept that.

The reasonable complaint is that attendees are hauling their trash off the playa but the infrastructure to deal with the trash after that still needs to be improved.

Personal anecdote: I attended lightning in a bottle years ago and they had a similar "pack it out" rule. Well that doesn't help when you're not aware of that prior to attending and need to dispose of plates from food you purchased at the event. I guess the expectation is that a day visitor carry around a trash bag full of waste with them all day. It came across as lazy by the event organizers.

80,000 people attend the event. Not all of them obey the principles. The overwhelming majority do. As stated by a sibling comment, the peak trash density was 7 square feet in one acre, with the event as a whole coming in at under the 1 square foot per acre mandated by the BLM.

Compare this to literally any other event: music festival, political rally, concert, whatever. Your protestations are completely absurd.

Great project, both requires and creates optimism.

Sadly, some marketer is probably reading this and trying to figure out how they can exploit the "cooperative effort and whimsical creativity" of the non-tech-driven IRL networks...

“Probably” doesn’t do it justice. If you haven’t seen this documentary it’s worth checking out if you’re curious to see how sinister and deep the rabbit hole goes.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

Indeed!! Hell, just the first three minutes indicates where this is going...

So, this is a traceroute LARP.

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