What has really happened at Burning Man?

When, three years from now, you watch a Netflix documentary about the disaster of Burning Man 2023, remember this article. The eco-friendly festival, attempting to recreate the hippie nature of the 60s but with a $400 ticket price, has been, unsurprisingly, an absolute fiasco. Sooner or later, it had to happen, much like the Fyre Festival or a more modern Woodstock. There were talks of Ebola and people being besieged, but… What has really happened at Burning Man?

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I’m burning

Burning Man was born in 1986 in the silliest way: a group of young people built a wooden figure of a man and burned it, repeating the ritual in subsequent years on the San Francisco beach. Things started to get out of hand when the original group of 35 people grew to 78,850 attendees in 2019, and Burning Man was charging between $190 and $1,400 per ticket. Additionally, it changed its location to the Black Rock Desert in the middle of Nevada.

Even during the pandemic years, around 20,000 people would gather to burn the wooden man and connect with nature. The problem is that this year, approximately 73,000 people attended, paying between 225 and 2,750 euros for a ten-day experience… And it has turned out to be one of the biggest chaotic events in the history of such gatherings.

The camp where this “city” (as they call it) is usually established was completely flooded, leaving all its attendees stranded without clean water and, of course, without portable toilets. They wanted to live self-sufficiently, didn’t they? Well, there you have it, a perfect experience. Some people, like Chris Rock, managed to escape in a van in time, but most were trapped, unable to go anywhere, and turned the venue into pure mud.

The gates were closed, people en route had to turn back, and those still there had to ration their canned goods and survive as best they could. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it? So far, one person’s death has been reported, which will likely put an end, at least temporarily, to the “art and culture” festival that had been organized for nearly 40 years. There are no activities, no music, no food, and certainly, no one had the desire to burn a wooden figure. At least there wasn’t Ebola. That’s something.

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