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Wait, What Happened at Burning Man?

The counterculture festival (and Silicon Valley networking bacchanal) got mired in the mud and the internet had a field day.

Pocket Editors

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Burning Man, the annual festival where tens of thousands gather in the Nevada desert to embrace self-expression, celebrate art and simply get weird, inspires devotion and eye-rolling in seemingly equal measure. While the event espouses anti-capitalist values and radical self-reliance, it also happens to attract ultra-wealthy tech moguls and influencers out for the likes. This year, Burning Man’s complicated politics were thrust into the spotlight as massive flooding turned the desert into an impassible mud pit, closing roads, and temporarily stranding attendees with limited food and water, much to the delight of its online detractors.

Read on to learn more about what happened when the “Burners” got bogged down on the playa and how the bohemian gathering became another battlefield in the culture wars.

Image by Posnov / Getty Images

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Everyone piled in on the private jet-flying tech bros getting bogged down in the rain and mud. Can anyone blame us?

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The History of Burning Man (2019)

How the event’s humanist roots made way for the tech industry’s world view.

How Larry Harvey, the Founder of Burning Man, Taught America to Experiment (2018)

For Harvey, it started with the punks, whose imperatives he summarized as “Never sell out, make your own show.”

An Oral History of Burning Man, the Biggest, Weirdest, Most Clothing-Optional Desert Carnival on the Planet (2012)

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