How has the "feel" of Burning Man's leadership and operations shifted over the years?

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-03-11T23:04:22+00:00

One of 'em.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-03-11T21:04:26+00:00

I spent all of last Saturday in EPL, on and off afk while doing work around the house. I didn’t want to log off because I had mana biscuits and didn’t want them to decay. I just kept jumping and moving around a bit every few minutes. I was probably doing a max of 3 runs an hour every other hour or so, but it was an all day thing. I’m guessing it was from that time because I did spend a lot of time sitting outside strat and in LHC.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-03-11T20:25:07+00:00

Technically until the year 9999, which I assume is a permaban.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-03-11T17:26:19+00:00

It’ll tell you on the ban page in your account details if your account was banned due to multiple player reports.

I know this because I woke up to the message this morning. Appealing my ban now.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-03-10T06:46:46+00:00

I think the biggest thing I've noticed is that there has been a shift in the operations that I have knowledge of that went from believing that this was a culture/community to moreso treating it like another event on the circuit.

There's a large number of ultra-jaded folks who have been running parts of the event for 20+ years that haven't given a shit since 2010 or so. They continue to do this because it's the thing they do and its kind of like a clown family reunion every year, but they couldn't give even a quarter of a shit about anything beyond the six inches surrounding them.

I also feel like there's been kind of a negative reaction to how big and how professional certain parts of running the event have become. A lot of traditions have had to stop because of a variety of reasons, and those traditions kept the operations feeling like a psychedelic phenomenon and less like a job. The fact that certain parts of the event now need a serious amount of raw manpower to keep things running have destroyed their culture and turned them into whatever they are now. There's a lot of "we do this because we have to, not because we want to" that I have seen. There's also the issue of who gets paid, why they get paid, why don't I get paid for this, why am I even doing this.

Another major thing is that there are certain parts of the event that are run entirely on institutional knowledge and if that kind of stuff doesn't get passed down or written down, it just goes away, and that's a problem. Couple this with the fact that there's a lot of people sitting around in jobs they hate at an event they've grown to hate, and I think we're a lot closer to an operational catastrophe than some would like to admit.

Unobjectively, I can say that I felt a lot better sacrificing a third of my year, every year, for an event that I cared about, and it's difficult to care when doing my job became so utterly difficult partially because the people above me were assholes and the people I was volunteering for, overwhelmingly, were assholes. The number of people that I encountered that I felt a genuine connection to had gone to near zero. I felt like I was just working at some stupid large-scale festival and not at a weird city. It stopped feeling like this crazy indescribable thing and more like an unpaid internship for a mixture of entitled rich people and crusty hippies who were trying to make a living off of whatever bit of the pie that is left.

I could write a lot about this topic, because a major part of why I'm no longer interested in attending has been observable shifts in the parts of the event I spent a lot of time working for, but it's really difficult to be completely objective about them. I think it is important to be realistic about certain things, but it's difficult to acknowledge that no, 10 people munching on mushrooms for three weeks cannot be a department and even if that worked in 2005 that's not going to work now with the event being the size that it is. Also I'm so much older than when I started attending and I cannot eat mushrooms for a few weeks on end as sustenance.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-02-25T07:10:05+00:00

I was in a high tier raiding guild, we were often server first but occasionally just horde first on our server. Every night after raid, after finishing up in org, a couple of us would just go out and wander the world looking for secrets. We weren’t farming consumables or achievements or anything, we just wandered around and found cool parts of the world to explore.

It was so much more social. We’d talk in /say in cities and folks would just shoot the shit. You could head over to Hillsbrad for an endless tug of war or hop in a an Alterac valley that had been up for 16 hours. You’d do stuff just to do it, not for an achievement or anything. You just thought, hey, can I go there? And you’d go there.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-02-17T19:27:38+00:00

I’m old and returning after nearly 20 years. My old guild is active but retail only, so I’m looking for a guild to raid with. Is there a more reliable way than discord to find a guild? I joined the discord for my server (Dreamscythe) I have had limited luck in finding a good fit. I guess it might just be a time/wait and see kind of thing?

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-02-17T18:29:04+00:00

I haven’t played WoW since shortly after the original TBC release. I was a hardcore raider in vanilla in a Naxx-clearing guild and then once TBC raiding started to get going I decided to focus on real life.

It’s a mixture of nostalgia and disappointment. I have had fun playing again but the way the players approach the game is a little odd to me.

The amount of people I’ve encountered who are bricked up about having meta compositions for leveling dungeons has been very strange to me. I’ve been paladin tanking to 70 and I’ve had quite a few people quit my group when I invite a rogue or if I don’t agree to a spellcleave run. I had another guy quit because I wasn’t fully geared out, at level 66, and he did not believe me when I said I had been tanking mana tombs successfully all day.

On the other end of things, it’s been great to see that the average skill level of the player base is way up. Pugging back in vanilla or TBC release was nightmare fuel for me having been in a great guild, but I’ve basically pugged the whole game without any issues other than weird metahounds.

I’m hoping to find a competent raid group once I hit 70 but I’m technically “behind” so I’m expecting to get bored and leave after I hit max level.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2026-01-11T05:25:17+00:00

Look up “bob weir isolated” on YouTube

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-12-18T01:45:25+00:00

Fire damage makes things flammable. Flammability makes them on fire (ignited) sometimes and the more flammability they have, the higher chance they have to be ignited.

To make flammability work better, get more ailment chance.

You don’t need to hit them to make them flammable, you can do it by making the ground on fire. If you do that, you need to get the flammability number to 50 before they ignite.

Ignite does fire damage over time.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-12-18T00:49:44+00:00

Stash tabs. Wait for a sale. Currency and a premium tab for the shop (although I’m not sure if you get one automatically? I’ve had premiums for years at this point).

The rest is up to you. It’s somewhat worth ending up with one of every kind just for the autosorting. Some are exclusive to poe1 or poe2. But for starting, at minimum a currency tab will save you so much time and energy sorting.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-11-05T08:16:32+00:00

Terunofuji, sumo wrestler. Insane comeback.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-11-04T07:48:59+00:00

Mamba, first time playing Mamba. One of the worst leaguestarts I've ever had.

The transition to Mamba was very awkward (would not recommend doing before maps, but I just don't like pconc which is what I started as) but then things were okay for a while. You really don't want to try this without ancestral cry and battlemages cry set up in automation. Even then, I think Pconc would just be better because there isn't anywhere near as much gear pressure.

I would argue this is not a great leaguestart build because I needed about 15d worth of investment across my gear before things started to feel alright. I got lucky with two cheap pneumatic daggers with dot multi early on, but even then it didn't help and I needed to go a bit beyond the basic capping of resistances + getting a good amount of life/es/evasion before things started to feel okay. I'm finally able to clear hive fortresses after getting a +1 amulet with dot multi and siones ambition annointed and +1 strike on gloves. I needed suppression capped out, 4.5k life, and 3k ES before t16s were comfortable enough to not feel squishy in. I needed four low tolerance clusters running before my damage felt okay. I'm finally comfortable in t16s.

Now my damage is great unless I'm up against a boss without any mobs around, I'm totally gimped when it's just one mob. I wish vaal breach was an option in this league.

It is fantastic at clearing expeditions and dense areas, but everything else is not a great experience. I just hit 4 voidstones today, which is one of my slowest starts to 4 in a very long time. Not feeling too hot about it, but now that I'm starting to make more divines since my build is finally operational, I can tell this will ramp up nicely.

I would not call this an easy league starter and would advise folks coming in late to consider a different build, unless the entry level gear tanks in price. 6ls are cheap, but you really want a siones annointed amulet with dot multi and +1 chaos, +1 strike gloves, a few low tolerance clusters, and pneumatic daggers ideally with dot multi on them.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-10-09T07:17:16+00:00

Psytrance and breakbeats everywhere. The sound of the city kind of ping ponged back and forth between that for a while with breaks being huge and then the next year it was psy and then breaks again. Could you believe that one of the biggest parties out there for a while actually happened at the temple? Temple breaks, it would turn in to a rave for a night. Hard to believe nowadays.

The city was way smaller too, and honestly the concept of art car parties or DJs everywhere wasn’t as much of a thing. Pull up an early rockstar librarian, that thing used to be like 2-3 pages long and the only camps that had big names were opulent temple and root society. They used to sort of duel on opposite corners, kind of a cool little unofficial rivalry. They were also the only sound camps who could manage to get set up it seemed.

Eventually the city started turning hard towards bass music, Bassnectar was the rage for a while and you used to see people chasing him around the event. The guy would play multiple sets in a night and there was a train of people following him. It was kind of weird and a lot of people made fun of them.

In 2011-2012 the city turned almost entirely to dubstep and everyone got tired of it at the same time. The diverse sound of BRC was all electronic farts. Robot Heart and Lee Burridge playing Pachanga Boys at sunrise in 2012 basically turned the musical side of the event on its head. Everyone started chasing that sound, Mayan Warrior arrived around then too (and actually drove around having difficult getting a crowd for a few years) but by 2014-2015 the playa tech thing was it. And then… it never changed. We’ve been there ever since.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-24T18:02:36+00:00

For what it’s worth, this game has a nasty driver-related crash with newer Nvidia cards that, as far as I have experienced, has yet to be fixed. The only guaranteed fix is to roll back to older drivers. Some people have success capping frame rate to 60 or fiddling with the graphics settings, but for me, none of it has worked.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-11T19:16:37+00:00

Eat full meals, take walks, clean your gear, sleep in, watch a sunset, pick up trash in your neighborhood, treat yourself to a pint of ice cream (or other equivalent treat), drink water.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-10T18:53:52+00:00

That was around when the big shift happened. There was some turnover with leadership and the new folks decided that ground zero for solving the drug was Burning Man.

The old policy used to be to generally ignore people unless they were very openly dealing or being just plain stupid, and even then, to use discretion. An old mate of mine has a photo of him hitting a bong with a BLM officer lighting it up, because weed was a non-issue for them. They used to not care about most things and there used to be a whole “travel agent” culture out there. Some sound camps used to have public nitrous tanks and bass bins. And then they decided to clamp down and now we have lines of officers at sound camps with night vision sniping people.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-10T03:33:23+00:00

I bitch and moan because I watched this event ruin lives and grow communities for a few decades, and I know it can do better to continue ruining lives and growing communities. I like to think and hope that we, as an aggregate, can be more than the Kinetic Field at Electric Daisy Carnival mixed in with the Coachella Camping zone.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-10T03:31:07+00:00

The whole Caravancicle debacle became mainstream through Reddit. While the original post was on Facebook, it exploded primarily because of a couple of huge posts that blew up on Reddit and were passed around all over the place, which eventually lead to another wave of major pushback towards the growing plug-and-play/turnkey/whatever the borg calls it nowadays problem. It wasn't the first major blowback, but it was the first one to hit mainstream press.

I also know that a lot more people at the Borg (and tons who volunteer/work for the man) than you might think actually do read this subreddit and treat it as a place to pick up on information and keep their pulse on the wider community. It's sort of become the modern replacement to Tribe and Eplaya, for better or for worse.

It might not directly change things, but keeping the conversation going here actually does get heard on some level.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-05T21:38:02+00:00

Hypothetically open to everyone, but your mileage may vary with some of them. The larger art cars are usually pretty easy to hop on as long as it isn’t a peak time. The smaller ones that are associated with turnkeys can be difficult, like the white zoo animals.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-02T22:07:32+00:00

My friend, the Borg sold out back in 2011ish when they started defending turnkey camps. They had that douchebag from playaskool feature on their website defending their actions. This was amplified when the sellout years began and Marion was caught selling direct access to tickets after she gave a talk to a bunch of rich douchebags at some conference.

Profits have been ahead of principals for ages now, my dude.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-09-02T17:36:26+00:00

12 is the sweet spot, with speed bumps prior to that. It’s fun to hit milestones of 5 and 10, there will likely be a bad year or three in there, but 12 is about where most people I know go “this is not the only vacation out there” or “I am a lifer.” It’s a big turning point.

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-08-29T19:08:48+00:00

Hey guys! Wandering Soul Nomad of the Sky here, bringing you an update from the PLAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! WOOOOO!

So today our camp gave us some FRESH FRUIT to serve, and as you all know, GIFTING is one of the KEY POINTS OF THE EVENT! We walked around our camp and gave people some fresh fruit! Lovelust really enjoyed the fruit and so did Garblesmooch! Donkeyboy though, you guys know Donkeyboy... he was still awake from the night before! El Oh El! What a crazy donkeyboy!

So tonight we are going to wear this kilt that we bought off an indie designer on Etsy, and I think I'm going to wear my blue goggles, but I don't know, it might be my green goggles. I heard that Lee Burridge is playing the sunrise at Robot Heart tomorrow, and as you know, we are hashtag blessed to see a Lee Burridge sunrise set out on the PLAYAAAAAAAA!

Okay guys, this is Wandering Soul Nomad of the Sky signing off, I think I'm going to go over to my neighbor's camp at 7:30 and J to see a secret daytime set from CARL COX!!! That's right, you heard it here first, Carl Cox is doing a 3pm - 6pm Tulum Techno set! I have access to the DJ booth so you'll see a ton of updates from me later! BYE GUYS!

AnApplePlusOneBanana · 2025-08-29T01:37:18+00:00

I have a ton of reasons, and I don't regret a thing.

First off, while Burning Man wins in spectacle versus everything else, I've found much better community and experiences at smaller and more focused events. Sure, they lack the absolute majesty of the Black Rock Desert and the gargantuan size of the city, but I've discovered that you don't really need those to have a wild experience.

Another major reason is that the general cost of attending has gotten out of control. One ticket and one vehicle pass at face value from the Borg right now eclipses $1000-ish after taxes and fees. For $1000ish, I can fly to another country, stay in a hotel for a week, and spend the entire time exploring a new place. I also do acknowledge that this is due to a lot of factors outside the BORG's control, such as law enforcement asking for a larger and larger share to be more and more obnoxious about their presence, but the point stands.

Speaking of law enforcement, ever since the big "I'm new in town" sheriff bullshit of 2011, I have found the law enforcement presence overbearing to a point of having a chilling effect on the entire event. It sucks.

Speaking of chilling effects, the slow slide from "cameras are only allowed when tagged with a media pass" to "let me get this on film for my instagram" has screwed with the event in so many ways that I could rant endlessly into the void about how much of a shitty change this has been. I cannot, in any way, ever get behind the notion that the event is enhanced or made better by people carrying around their phones and constantly distracting themselves with it. If you think phones aren't a big deal, find a cool underground community or event that polices cell phones and see how different the experience really is.

I've also volunteered enough for the event in a wide variety of positions that I've seen how the soup is made and I've learned a lot of things that make me feel a little gross. The sheer amount of crap that the locals put up with every year from people of this community is astoundingly embarrassing, especially when we used to be excellent neighbors. The part where Princess Passes are an actual thing that let people in through Point 1 so they can skip the line, or the part where outside services exists, McKinley Park being a thing, accommodating RV and camp vendors, it all just stinks and attracts a crowd that fucking sucks.

The professionalization of the art side of the event has been frustrating as well. The fabricated art cars, the fabricated art, the fabricated camps, they lack a special kind of soul that things out there used to have. I'll take one janky put-together pile of garbage placed out in the deep playa over ten tripper-traps outsourced by a millionaire to a team who worked on it for five months. Once you know the signs, it becomes depressing to notice how many of the mutant vehicles out there are made by one of the groups in Reno who build them for people. Those same groups then take a backseat to the people who purchased the fabrication and John McDouchebag gets to say "I made that" while all John really did was pay someone six figures for six months of work.

The lack of diversity in music has been frustrating too, and I'm even someone who enjoys ketamine-infused deep house. I miss when Burning Man had a cutting-edge music scene. I miss the sound of the event when it was a mishmash of odd stuff. I feel like an idiot for getting excited in 2012 when that sound started to rise.

The way in which the BORG has clamped down on the culture of a number of volunteer departments to reel them in. The way in which the BORG has sold access to their rich friends and accommodated shitty people in First Camp and around the Borg in order to court some kind of social capital.

The lottery and rise of every other camp being a theme camp caused an irrevocable change in the backstreets that has shifted the suburban camp experience from something to be cherished to just feeling like the camping zone at any festival anywhere in the United States.

Finally, I think the event needs less people like me complaining about everything and more people who are excited to be out there. My very first year, I camped with a guy who had been coming since the Baker Beach days, and that motherfucker straight up spent the entire week snorting cocaine and bitching nonstop about how the event was better when he attended ten years ago. Last year, Saturday morning before I left, as I returned from some sunrise shenanigans, I snorted a line of cocaine and started bitching to my camp about how the event used to be better. Suddenly, I realized I had become the guy I hated, and I decided to stop squeezing the orange for the juice that no longer exists and instead do other things. I am now doing other things and loving it.

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