Comments on: Is there too much positive energy at Burning Man?

By: Toi Box

Toi Box — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:33:45 +0000

Love this and I can totally believe that it happened. Why? Because I did it myself.
2004, my BF at the time I were drunkenly stumbling through centre camp and saw the playa info booth un-maned. We decided to man it.
We called ourselves Playa misinfo
anyone that came up to us we said “Playa Miss-info we bring lies, deceit and ms-information, how can we help you” and even after saying that people would sincerely ask us directions some place.
Anything anyone asked we sent them to Jiffy Lube. This went on for hours.
Until one guy came up and asked us how to get to Jiffy Lube.
We had no idea what to tell him and just collapsed in a heap of laughter.
Then we told him how to get to Jiffy Lube.

This is the kinda shit I come to playa for. I come to work hard and talk shit and pull pranks with a bunch of fucking Jerks. I get enough people shoving their “positive” energy in my face in real life. Trying to tell me to smile and tell me to be happy and to aligning my chakras or something. I want a place where I can let my snark shine and I found it in Black Rock.

Now I mean this sincerely, a culture that practices radical self expression and freedom is very enticing for a girl like me. However it can also be very intimidating when you notice that non of those expressions resemble you’re own at all. I pretty much expected a giant tribal hippie fest my first year and almost thought I was just a little to jaded and sardonic for it all. It can be very isolating when you are the only one wearing black in a sea of rainbows.

I found, for the first time, that my particular brand of me could not only be accepted, but actually appreciated there (and with burners regionally). Sure not everyone is going to love my “negativity”, but the fact that are people who will is pretty fucking amazing if you ask me.

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By: Etaoin Shrdlu

Etaoin Shrdlu — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:06:20 +0000

As a long standing member (no pun intended) of the Self-Service Abortion Clinic, all I can say is that I love our babies to death.

This year, if we get tickets, we may offer Social Services for those who feel they may be too traumatized before they pick up a coat hanger or knitting needle.

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By: Perfect_Timing

Perfect_Timing — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:01:49 +0000

Speaking as yet another one of the guys behind the Black Rock City Abortion Clinic and Back Alley Cinema (assistant abortionist, chief projectionist), I have to say that our camp *IS* indeed PRO-LIFE! We didn’t manage to kill a single person… that year…

Btw, speaking as a now 3-year veteran (A WORLD OF PAIN, LARRY), I still think my favorite BM moment came in my first year when a group of us (including several unnamed Rangers) protested Veg Camp by parking a deep fat fryer across the street from them and served up piping hot BACON to anyone and everyone who wanted some.. There was a brief moment of confrontation (not actually with the Veg Camp people, they were actually pretty good-natured over our protest), but with a random person wandering back to his camp, apparently. Rangers dealt with the situation and it was just a damn good time. We were just annoyed at constantly having to see animal cruelty videos every time we passed by them on the way back from the playa.

pt…

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By: puppymeat

puppymeat — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:45:59 +0000

This is a response to Rabbit who posted on Nov. 13th. I am one of the guys behind the abortion camp he stopped at (with the jello fetus shots). I find it absolutely hilarious he thought we were a pro-life camp.

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By: gravit8

gravit8 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:42:31 +0000

it’s a challenge; how to out-dick the dicks. The snark, the intent to throw you off balance, is an opportunity to unload all the garbage you carry around with you in the alter-verse that takes up 51 weeks of the rest of the year. You can put all your frustrations into insulting some goober who has picked you out of the crowd to insult over a megaphone. It can harden your soul against the rest of the BS you deal with the rest of the year and you can still walk away with a smile when you realize you CAN put up with complete jackassery AND give it back during a time when it won’t exactly come back to you vis a vis getting fired (for telling your fuckface boss what an enormous douche canoe he is) or finding a new place to live (oh the things we hold against our spouse/roomate/gimp).

And, hey, if you don’t like a camp, or run across something unsavory, all you need to do is WALK DOWN THE ROAD and chances are you’ll find something or someone that’ll make you forget about the cockwarts that dwell over at H and 9:30. And you’ve always got next year to find a retort to that little quip that made about your ghey-ass hat. Because, seriously…feathers?

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By: graymatter

graymatter — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:59:49 +0000

oh this is good really good… more please, healthy hate and a bit of the dark side, it is really what makes life much more interesting, of course anything can be taken too far (including the hippie love fest that ends at the freeway racing home)

some of my happy )’( moments are the camp cornhole guys playing carney yelling at folks walking by, often inciting them to come have a free drink, another great moment in 2007 was being on a pitch black nasty art car with f-me if I can remember his name driving, very loud angry music charging across the playa on dawn patrol and well, him might have circled the morning yoga a little too long, and this year in the wee hours I had the pleasure of riding my nice monkey bike up to a very nasty camp of Renoites and their posse of locals, bad attitude, good music and a skate ramp, they had an edge and made a number of folks uncomfortable – the hate was real, they weren’t joking, people were uncomfortable and that is OK (no injury or destruction just negative energy), of course in our own small but marry group camp jager bindle unofficially there are a number of things that to a newbie would seem un-buringman, but this is really part of the beauty and love, buringman is what you make it and how you take it

see ya on the playa

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By: Crystalmiel

Crystalmiel — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:29:15 +0000

Please visit CAMP HATE!

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By: Pop Tart

Pop Tart — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:27:32 +0000

Excellent points, great post. Burning Man artificially tries to be incredibly “toucy-feely” without really examining the full course of human experience and expression, from the beautiful to the truly hideous. The “positive energy” of Burning Man is, from my experience, a false, Ecstasy-induced construct that that actually attempts to disable the other facets of our “human-ness.” Thanks, Caveat, for reminding us of our humanness!

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By: Sondra

Sondra — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:47:26 +0000

I still love you after all these years.

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By: DPTV

DPTV — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:37:51 +0000

“Instead of trying to push what disturbs us, bothers us, irritates us, frightens us away, just like we do in the default world, why not try confronting it … and turning that experience into art?”

Thank you, Caveat.

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