In the Latest JackRabbit Speaks: Jim Tannabaum no longer a board member

I think there are, shall we say, intersectional issues at play here, and "it's all/nothing to do with wealth" kind of misses the point.

It would seem that for (for the sake of argument) ~$1000 you can have a perfectly comfortable plug n' play experience, with a lot of BM's "rough edges" smoothed away for you.

For a significantly higher amount (let's say $17K) you can have a significantly smoother experience still, whilst being spoon-fed a baby-food-consistency notion that you're doing something really important involving "radical sustainability", in dainty little spoons by people being paid to be really nice to you.

Which seems to rub some people the wrong way, when it filters out into the social medias.

If, as depicted in the movie Spark, you're having a self-congratulatory circle jerk over having TED Talks in your camp, whilst failing at the absolutely-basic level of cleaning your shit up, you're doing it pretty mind-bogglingly wrongly.

Again as depicted, you then have someone describing it as a "teachable moment" but wondering if they'll "really get it".

So far, eh, not so much.

If anything, pretty much the complete fucking opposite. Same shit, loftier goals, different price point, different year.

Despite what would seem to be all the access in the world to high-level people prepared to make it a teachable moment, but apparently too enthralled by the notion that "persons of influence" will somehow spread "the gospel" based on what I now look at at a homeopathic burner experience (consume this thrice-filtered water, flown in from Fiji, that has a Burning Man experience diluted to 1 part BM per 1000 parts h2o. Thus enlightened, shall ye spread the good word back in default, via the medium of your well-funded start-up app that sort of AirBnB-for-backyard-alotments)

As an aside, I never quite get over the moment in the aforementioned Spark where Mr. Plug n Play explains that it's not that his campers don't want to decorate their bikes. it's that they're in too much of a hurry to..... get our there for their first photoshoot. Which pretty much says it all, though he might as well have added "...at Robot Heart, because, you know, that's pretty much how you do Burning Man, right? Photoshoot at Robot Heart?"

It is probably safe to say that people who aspire to "luxurious camps", as you put it, are not going away. And clearly there's a need for enculturalization, but if the goal of said camp runners is to de-Burning Man Burning Man as much as possible, whilst creating a paid-staff echo-chamber of affirmation and on-demand Segway shuttles to Robot Heart for photos, eh.... broader acceptance of their "special needs" seems a long way off.

/r/BurningMan Thread Parent Link - jackrabbit.burningman.com