2012 Ticket Trials 2.0

Whoa. Yep, it seems worse than expected.
“Radical Inclusion” + Awesome Experience + [Supply < Demand] = The reality of our current situation.
And ya know what? This may not be a bad thing.

**NOTE: I AM NOT AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF BURNING MAN. I am merely a Participant with a passion for the event, people, and Principles of Burning Man. **

NOTE:
Feb 22 – Secure Ticket Exchange Program (STEP) opens
March 28th – Open Sale (10,000 additional tickets)

About the author: John "Halcyon" Styn

John

Halcyon is a 21-year Burning Man participant and co-founder of Pink Heart camp. He is author of "Love more. Fear less." and producer of the Burning Man short film, "The Pink Path." He's won Webby awards for his over-the-top personal site & his "Love On Demand" video podcast HugNation.com. Halcyon co-founded the San Diego based "1st Saturdays" homeless outreach program based on Burning Man Principles and coaches people how to be radically self expressed in the default world. You can find his full Playa Tips & Tricks series at www.PlayaPrinciples.com

43 Comments on “2012 Ticket Trials 2.0

  • Bootsie says:

    I haven’t been able to check the forums, do pardon if someone else has made this suggestion. Could someone make a site for burners to network to build new theme camps? It seems that in many camps, too few people gained tickets to make their camp happen. Instead of giving up, could there be an easy way for burners whose camps are displaced ban together to pool their resources and make plans before they get to the playa? Hopefully those that do have tickets will be able to solve logistical problems with others that way. Playa provides and all, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable showing up with a robe and a sandwich if my camp wasn’t able to make it.

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  • Mazer says:

    I half agree with this video….

    A growing beast indeed, but did demand really go up 40-50,000 people in 1 year…

    No. 17. This ticket is a revocable license that may be revoked by Burning Man for any reason…

    If they need a way to re due this…
    Issue all tickets charged for now… and cancel them..

    There would still be a ticket shortage… BUT…
    If tickets were sold (as many people have suggested…
    1 ticket = 1 person
    Name on it
    Transferable until a few weeks before the show..

    This would give larger theme camps and families at least 70-75% of needed tickets…
    Don’t You Agree…

    I honestly in my heart believe that something happened in the lottery..
    I hope I’m wrong… But its really bad for the event and community if that’s the case…

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  • HK says:

    Apologist for incompetence.
    (let me guess…you have a ticket John?)

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  • Jason1969 says:

    The demand is real. 300,00+ “like” Burning man on Facebook. Some popular videos that have been passed around have millions of hits on YouTube. Last year, the first sell out year, was amazing in weather and in art. I really feel not having any whiteouts really added to the perfect storm we have now.

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  • @HK – No apology necessary! It is a valid question. ;)
    I bought a ticket in the pre-sale. 17 or so in my camp do not. Whether not I attend this year, I am involved with the same discussions as to the future of my own and my camp’s participation.

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  • HK says:

    Obviously, you have a ticket…

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  • As a person who has a disabled permit and works with Kidsville and the disabled camp plus i bring a golf cart to transport other handicapped people i almost take offence at the fellow burners who say we can not bring our RV’s to stay in while we enjoy the theme camps, art work and daily events of BM – i too did not get a ticket – I will wait and see what happens – I can not afford a scalper ticket and usually try to buy one of the first two tiers of tickets offered – I am not one of the so called rich that have been talked about – i have been helping others at BM since 2000 and it is one of my best times of the year – I am hoping in the next 2 weeks that BM gets stuff together and tickets are available – Time will tell and finger pointing will slow down – It is a great event –

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  • HK says:

    Sorry to repeat myself…my earlier comment was not appearing thus I thought it was removed.
    I love your many posts!
    (except this one)
    HK

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  • @HK – Fair enough. I appreciate the dialogue. :)

    @Speeder – There has been many things said rashly amidst the frustration. But I doubt anyone is suggesting we reduce access / options of those with disabilities. While I love my RV, I would be willing to entertain a “No RV’s (without medical cause)” rule if it would reduce the demand for tickets to a manageable level. Truthfully, I’m willing to entertain almost any idea that will diffuse the venom in the air as of late.

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  • How it Went Down says:

    WHAT WENT DOWN

    Author Gave Permission to re post.
    So what do you need to enter?
    Unique CC#, unique email, and a semi-unique address.
    The last name on the credit card should ideally match, though that’s not strictly true if CVV and Zip both clear. First name almost never counts, my credit cards are all over the place: Al, Alvin, Al K, Alvin KaiHau.
    1. Generate as many unique “ShopSafe” credit card numbers as you want from your credit card companies’ web site. No limit. Free.
    2. Gmail accounts. Free.
    3. Unique addresses. My address is on Adeline st, but if addressed to XXXX Adeline st, Unit #24 or Unit# 124, etc, I’ll still get the mail. My old address was 199 new montgomery St – 400 people live there. Good luck figuring that out.

    How about banning duplicate IP addresses?
    IP address sharing is common for work/home. IP anonymizers readily available (tor, personalvpn).

    How safely, how much work, how much money?
    It’s conservative to say 8 numbers/emails/address units, all the with same last name, could be made undetected.
    It’d take less than an hour and the expected payout is $440 (2 sets of 2 tix).
    The only thing really necessary is a credit limit high enough to absorb actually winning multiple tickets. For example, a $7k limit could net 20 tickets and a potential $2200 gain.
    And I suspect all the sports and music ticket scalping operations know how to do this on an industrial scale.

    How is this different than a virtual “line”?
    The primary difference from before is that is used to happen all at once, so sure, the line was long, but a regular person could still get in line. But now, the new system effectively benefits multiple entrants with high credit limits, and scalpers with the machinery to enter hundreds (or thousands) of times.
    _The current system puts at considerable disadvantage the poor and those who enter only once._

    Should I have entered at a higher price?
    This ticketing system looks similar to previous years, but the effects couldn’t be more different. If you really want to go, there’s no reason to not enter at $390. All entering for less means is to reduce chances of getting a ticket or winner. And losing the lottery means a ticket price of…$390.
    Not only that, now that the lottery sold out, it’s $390 and getting in line too! Again, if you can’t afford it, you’re at a disadvantage.

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  • G says:

    Thanks for those thoughts John.

    There is lots of anger and wounded pride on the various threads on this site. It is totally understandable.

    Allow me to go all Buddhist here. I would beg people to try not to let the seductive temptation of anger to rule their minds. This is more than ever a time to maintain an open mind, a clear and centered mind, so possibilities can be recognized and realized. Anger traps the mind, blinds it to real potentials. Closed mindedness and clinging to the past will doom Burning Man. Thinking outside of the box and practicing creativity will grow it.

    To those with out tickets sniping at those who do, well, I am unsure a ticket is a blessing either. You are battling anger for not having a ticket. I do have a ticket (feel free to snipe at me), but that is hardly a blessing. I am battling fear and doubt. What awaits this year at BRC? I am fighting fear and worry over what might be there, what might happen there, and, will it be worth it to go to the considerable effort and expense to go there? I am unsure. How will my camp get our considerable work done pre-opening with 1/4 the crew? Curiosity is my biggest motivator right now. BRC this year is guaranteed to be a journey into the unknown. Past years, BRC has provided comfort and familiarity and predictability. This year? No one knows.

    So John, you have something I am grieving over. You are 40 ! I’d trade my ticket for that. Very soon I embark on my seventh decade. YIKES! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

    BTW Thanks for the pink hair. That black color was totally wigging me out!

    G

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  • Raymaker says:

    Complaining is cool. Complaining is not petty. It makes society progress. My life experiences have shown to me that the cool guys who always told me not to be so ‘petty’ have done very little with their lives. People who have said ‘don’t complain, it’s petty’ have done so because they didn’t want change, because change would move them from the top of the social alpha male ladder. People are very vocal about their disappointment with the new ticket process, for from the start when ‘the complainers/whiners’ pointed out how this was a mistake, apologists for the BMorg were condemning them, and this video is a follow on of that attitude. If your video had lasted just 30 seconds and said “shit, we screwed up, sorry” it would have been more palatable. Strangely it appears to me that all the pro-ticket system apologists whether they presently have tickets or not are those with deep/strong connections to the Burning Man Culture, they feel assured those connections will get them a ticket eventually (which actually is fine by me).

    Saying that, 95% of what you say in your video is very good and I agree with it. I myself have decided not to expect getting a ticket in STEPs, not getting a March ticket, so I have now started to make other arrangements to do something else to ease the distress this present ticket process has caused. Hopefully I will get a cultural high out of it like I did by going to BM.

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  • Dani says:

    Thanks Halcyon. I am not frustrated with the people, I am frustrated by the outcome. I have a ticket, but many of my friends do not.

    Funny. A campmate and I were talking about the sell out last year, and she mentioned that someone at the org has said – the regionals must be the growth. I supposed that is true, but your comment about it being “Mecca” is also true. It is the true home. The one place.

    I can’t wait to see how this year turns out.

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  • joe says:

    Going to the darkside often offers potential for growth. Don’t forget to look for the positives – should not be too hard to do for such a generally optimistic burnch (sorry, pun intended – can’t help myself :-)) of people. Is this recent crisis actually a challenge that will eventually be considered a gift a year from now? Try to look for the dawn. While it is time to continue the conversation, it is also time to begin the creativity again.

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  • Katie says:

    While I don’t think it’s productive at all to get snippy with the folks who were lucky enough to get their tickets, comments like this…

    “To those with out tickets sniping at those who do, well, I am unsure a ticket is a blessing either. You are battling anger for not having a ticket.I do have a ticket (feel free to snipe at me), but that is hardly a blessing. I am battling fear and doubt. What awaits this year at BRC? I am fighting fear and worry over what might be there, what might happen there, and, will it be worth it to go to the considerable effort and expense to go there? I am unsure.”

    …are a dime a dozen. Want to trade in that fear and doubt you’re battling? Lots of takers, here. The fact that you got lucky doesn’t mean your opinion is necessarily invalid, but for for you to suggest that your luck is just some kind of illusion of the ticketless is just silly. If you’re not so sure it’ll be worth it, hand your ticket over to someone who doesn’t even have to ask that question.

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  • magdelyn says:

    How freakin’ annoying is this video? Condescending acutally. Wonder if this dude had to go through the lottery. Doubt. it.

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  • Spirited says:

    I have been running a theme camp for 4 years and a core theme camp
    member for may last 8 burns.

    The more video’s you post the more i don’t want to go to Burning Man.

    Your proving your self to be the dumbest Burning Man sparkle pony ever to set foot on the playa!

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  • grandpappy says:

    I agree that the BMorg had the best of intentions with their ticketing program, but the main problem is that they did not listen to the community when they predicted this exact situation and offered up alternative solutions! Not sure if it was hubris or a naive belief that people wouldn’t game the lottery, but I just don’t understand why they didn’t give credence to the idea that the lottery system itself created a panic-induced frenzy of demand.

    I’m totally with you on thinking positive and looking to take the spirit of Burning Man closer to home, but I disagree that the BMorg doesn’t deserve at least partial credit/blame for this clusterfuck. And I don’t say this because I want the cathartic comfort blanket that an easy target of blame brings, I just think that if the organization owned up to their lack of foresight and started working proactively with the community this situation can be salvaged.

    It is not too late to institute a non-transferable (except through STEP) stipulation on the tickets already assigned via the lottery. I’m a programmer who has the skills to implement a system like this, and I know SO many other talented programmers who are burners who are itching to help. All they have to do is reach out to the community!

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  • MMburn says:

    Thanks for the positive spin on things in the video. I agree that this could be a good change.
    Here is one idea. I’ve only been to BM 3 times, but I feel like some of the big theme camps are a bit exclusive and snotty, almost makes me feel like junior high school. That seems to go against the whole idea of BM.
    I’ve heard people on here say they are worried about there not being enough people with tickets in theme camps to pull off the camps… so why not just completely totally open them up to everyone else, people outside of your normal camp mates.
    Honestly, I have enjoyed my crew over the past three years. We set up a mini camp of about 15 people on “the beach” (outer edge) and chill out, sleep a lot and do a lot of quiet time with an occasional trip into town. But it would be fun to try the theme camp thing for a change (especially since less than 1/2 of my group is going now). Honestly, I don’t even know how to go about being in a theme camp, but why not make the whole thing more open, and maybe we will have even more innovation and creativity than in previous years.
    By the way, if this process already exists, please tell me.

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  • NewBurner says:

    As I am a virgin to Burning Man, take what I say with a grain of salt. Me and my group put in for 4 tickets, and got 2. So, at least me and my closest friend are going. I don’t think I’m alone. I have been attempting to get people to go to burning man with me for 15 years now, just never got anything together. This year, we finally bit the bullet. I think so did a lot of other people.

    The video makes a great point. There is such a thing as critical mass, which causes a chain reaction to occur, which far exceeds earlier growth. I think burning man has hit the critical mass. Its popularity and growth may have been steady in previous years, however it hit max size last year. I think that, coupled with it hitting critical mass, has made this explosion of interest happen that far far exceeds supply. Why is it that I am finally going after many years yearning for it? Enough people I know have finally heard of it from other sources, met someone who has gone, etc. that they finally gave in to my pressure and agreed to go. I think this has happened a lot of folks this last year.

    Am I worried about what it will be like? Not at all. I am not going because such and such theme camp will entertain me, or to see this or that event/thing/art. I am going to be part of some strange new thing I’ve always wanted to be a part of.

    If many large theme camps can’t make it, well, then so be it. Me and my small camp are already planning things we can do to make things great for everyone who wants to join us with whatever we are doing. The ticket sell out has made us more likely to participate in a greater way then before. I for one am excited to see how things turn out for everybody. This obviously is a watershed year for burning man and it just so happens its my first year! I am super excited, not bummed, angry or feeling let down. I know I have tickets, and many do not, that sucks for a lot of people, and I feel for them. My friends included.

    I think this will be an amazing, paradigm shifting, unusual and all new burning man that nobody can predict whats going to happen.

    I can’t wait to see what burning man is all about in person, as I think many many people are feeling the same way. Burning man has gotten too big for its britches, and change is upon us all. It can’t forever remain the exclusive club for the in crowd, else lets ditch radical inclusion once and for all.

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  • qqclccc says:

    Demand for burning man tickets did not increase by 70,000 in one year. Increased demand was created as an unintended consequence of an ill-conceived lottery system whereby most burners, including me, requested many more tickets than we needed.

    Since there can be no burning man event without theme camps, installations, amazing creations, and artists; this years event may be ruined because of the disruption to the artist creation that is necessary for the burning man event.

    This years burning man lottery system is much like a rock concert where the performing bands members are required to buy tickets thru a lottery in order to enter their own concert, but 80% of the band members are denied tickets due to the lottery. So what happens at the concert—-does every one just stand around and look at each other and hope that someone else can perform? Never rely upon a group of central planners (BMorg) to make your life or society work better. I thought that we already learned that lesson.

    A long-term solution:

    1) Lets assume that there is more demand than supply for the 55,000 total tickets, (perhaps there is more demand than supply by about 15,000 tickets, not 70,000).

    2) Allocate 38,000 tickets (2/3 of the total tickets) to theme camps, installation creation groups, artist groups or any other group that creates the burning man experience. The right to purchase these tickets is based upon merit of the application and to be chosen by BMorg and community, but preference should rely heavily upon the previous years creations or contributions to the burning man event. A single such group can purchase up to 150 tickets or just a single ticket for a single artist.

    This sale keeps the community together and creates competition to make better installations, theme camps, etc. each year. New and better ones apply and bad ones drop out or are not awarded tickets based upon merit. Tickets should not bear the names of individuals, but instead the winner of the application distributes the tickets as they best determine.

    3) The remaining 15,000 tickets (1/3 of the tickets) are sold at market prices, meaning the highest price that can be charged for the ticket based upon supply and demand. The profits from this sale are used to subsidize the 38,000 tickets and to help fund the art installations and other creations. This sale provides new people and new innovations to the community to make sure the community does not stagnate and eventually die off.

    This year’s solution

    1) Cancel the last planned sale of tickets (March 28). Instead, award all of the remaining tickets as outlined in Step 2 above, so as minimize the disruption to the theme camps, installations, participating artists and others that has been caused by the lottery.

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  • ic_eng says:

    Now that BM tickets are loose HOW DO WE ASCERTAIN we are being scalped Real Tickets ??

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  • Rocket Man says:

    Loved this message John, thanks for putting that together.

    It now looks like I am the only one from my camp to get a ticket (so far). Will I still go if indeed I have to go alone or with new people? Hell yes! So everybody got tossed into a bag and then they shook us all up! Ha! Brilliant! A new element of surprise, challenge and uncertainty is upon us. You mean I won’t be able to cling to my camp and campmates like a newborn? Damn! You mean we can’t build the same old thing we build every year? Crap! You mean we are going to have to think on our feet, reach out and join up with strangers to get something together? Curses on painful birth! A pox on growth and change! Put me back in the womb dammit! I was so warm and happy in there….

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  • Rexy says:

    Who sets the “limit” on our population?
    How long is our lease for this particular site?
    Who is not getting payed-off enough to increase the population limit to meet our needs? (It’s fuckin Nevada for christ sakes!!!!).

    Whaaat!!! nobody thought this would happen?There must be some heavy fog in the City— This situation was inevitable? Lets get busy to make this right!

    OR NOT!
    (there are many other festivals around the world)

    K

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  • Katie says:

    Rocket Man, you sound like you find it a perfectly joyous thing for 80% of your fellow burners to be excluded just so you can have a super special new burn. Maybe YOU clung to your camp “like a newborn,” but I think most of us can honestly say that we have very, very different reasons for wanting to see our old friends back on the playa. Discontinuity can be good, but I loathe the idea of putting novelty above PEOPLE. And by “people,” I don’t just mean the ones who can afford (financially or ethically) to pay a scalper a 100% markup.

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  • Wolffarmer says:

    Hey Speeder “Bill”
    In the other massive comment page I did do a bit of a diatribe against RV’s. Yes I can well see your point and at my age I could well be more disabled soon. Ok, people with a handicap permit can have an RV with generator/Air conditioner/indoor plumbing. Able body people, suck dust and sweat. I loved it last year and hope I can suck dust and sweat with the best again this year.

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  • Mark says:

    You should have stopped at 1:21.

    I’m pretty sure we all understand this concept of “supply and demand”, but thanks for the refresh…

    With the lottery system I understood that our chances were not great, even if everybody restrained themselves. I saw immediately that the lottery favored those with the resources to game the system. If we’d had the available credit I would have applied as well as my fiancee, doubling our chances. I would have signed up everyone I could. Everyone should. It’s basic game theory.

    Being poor, and having limited credit, we could only just afford the lowest level for the two of us, so we took the only chance we could and we signed up once for two tickets at the highest price we could afford ($240).

    If everyone had done this (apply for only your true need), and no scalpers got through the CIA-like background checks it would have been smooth sailing. It was never going to be. The lottery encouraged even those with the purest of intentions to “cheat” by requesting more than they needed, and ensured that those of us with fewer resources were squeezed out of lower tiers.

    I saw this coming. You saw this coming. Everyone saw this coming.

    I work for a major outdoor co-operative as full-time sales staff. You may have gotten advice from me on how to survive the week on the Playa. I make $10/hr. For the past year “full-time” has meant 30 hours a week, now we are cut to 20. It would still be tough to make it 3900 miles out there and back at Tier One prices. Unless the Low Income program comes through for us we are out of luck.

    I know this. I know all of this.

    Please, do not insult my intelligence by telling me “It’ll be OK, I’ll see you in Thailand.” No, you won’t.

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  • U2pilot says:

    Sorry Mark, but I’m pretty sure your application for a ticket at $240 locks you out of the low income tickets. I don’t know what else to say. Shitty situation.

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  • Mark says:

    You are locked out of low income only if you were awarded tickets.

    There are plenty of people who failed at $390 bragging about how they are going to fake W-2s to game the low income system already.

    But thank you for the sympathy…

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  • Baba O'Baba says:

    I wonder if it is possible to negotiate with the BLM to increase the number of tickets?

    Given our history of picking up after ourselves and, evidently, significantly increased demand, wouldn’t it be nice to expand BRC a bit?

    It’s a big playa… and we’ve got bikes!

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  • nikolaus heger says:

    Hey love your video. And your hair. This is exactly what I was thinking, but then yeah OK I have a ticket too, and 70% of my camp does not.

    Good thing radical inclusion is not dead;

    Which beach in Thailand? ’cause I live here. We need something here. Yeah I’ll make the pilgrimage to the black rock desert again this year…

    As for supply and demand – we can say there’s more demand than supply but the scale of that problem is unknown. BM could be 100% oversubscribed but I think, personally, it’s more like 10% or at the most 20%. Just that many of us had their friends in mind when they signed up for 2. I sign up for 2, you do too, and we maximize our chances, right. So the lottery system played a big part in …. what’s become the current situation.

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  • nikolaus heger says:

    @Rocket Man

    +1 YES, EXACTLY.

    Burning man “ruined” because many artists won’t come – HA HA HA. Funny. Do you think Burning man was crap all those years ago when it started and random people showed up? I don’t.

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  • Lenny Zappa says:

    I love you John, you’re so on point brother. This little dragon has definitely outgrown it’s cage and it’s too awesome for anyone to claim or lay dibs on. Everyone who wants to play with the dragon has to have a fair shot. Burning Man IS a petri dish and we need to let it grow out into the world, and if core burners and camps can’t go this year, then they need to take a bit of the culture in that petri dish and try to let it grow somewhere else this year.
    If the whole world was a bit more like burning man it would be that much better, so why are we so concerned with keeping it in one place at one time once a year? Knowing how amazing and transformative Burning Man is, why are we so concerned with keeping it to ourselves? Why don’t we REJOICE at the idea of new people taking our spots and sharing in the experience and then spreading that into the world? Why are we so convinced that Burning Man has to have the same ‘infrastructure’ year after year? If that’s the case then it’s only good to the old schoolers and can’t be applied to the rest of the world and that idea breaks my heart.

    What came first, the burner or the burn? Did regular people become burners thanks to the burn? Or did burners make a random gathering of people into the burn? If you have to already be a burner to participate, then burning man isn’t really special, its just a fucking blip that’s going to die out when the burners do.

    I don’t believe that. So let them come, and if a flood of new people turns BM into nothing more than ‘the worlds biggest party,’ we were doomed anyway.

    No, I don’t have a ticket yet.

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  • Steve "Sparky" says:

    grandpappy,
    You nailed it!!
    I told them the lottery system was going to fail and they blew me off! They heard me but didn’t listen to me or others!

    Bman organization can still recover if they act quick!

    1. Put names on the tickets, making scalping impossible.
    2. Give the scalpers an out, offer to buy back at face value. They will dump them in a second if they know what they have is worthless.
    3. Everyone buys there own damn ticket!
    4. It is an election year. Go over the BLM managements heads. One call from a congress man or woman of any party will get an easy 10,000+ increase in population. BLM is scared to death of budget cuts. Last thing they want is to be on the bad side of a congress person.
    The only people that should have a say on our size is the people directly affected, the people of Gerlach and surrounding areas. Put this in prospective, 50,000 people is not even a football game!

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  • Haig khatchikian says:

    Sorry I disagree with the person in the video. This problem was created by us Humans and not the Innocent burning man himself. I knew the first tickets will sold out fest. I wasn’t worried because last year 30,000 tickets were sold first and then the rest. Why would you change it to 40, 000 this year when you know it’s THE YEAR 2012. Instead you should have sold first half of the Tickets and then the other, also to make sure that the theme campers fairly get their tickets. Anyhow balance is the Key:))) There is always a loop hole for the best result. We can fix this! Much love…

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  • Sayer Oftheobvious says:

    This year’s ticket distribution methods are…well…to put it as plainly as possibly, unintelligent, senseless, inconsiderate, foolish and is a decision clearly lacking the necessary forethought most Burning Man contributions require. But, we’ll do what we can with what situations are given to us by those who have decided to apply a solution to what was never a problem to anyone but them, who simply couldn’t take the pressure of their self elected share of service to something far greater then any of us.

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  • technical monkey says:

    As for the person who suggested we contact our congressmen/women to go over BLM heads to request an increase in permitted population, only to point out that the only people who should have a say are locals affected by the event…..
    1. I sure hope our congress people are concerned with bigger matters than how many people get tickets to BMan, seriously. There are much bigger concerns out there in regards to the functioning of our country.
    2. Also, the size of the event should have to do with environmental impact, impact on the surrounding residents, and the capacity of the narrow roads. NOT whether everybody who wants to go gets to go.

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  • technical monkey says:

    Also, I must say it is extremely narrow-minded to suggest that congressmen/women threaten to withhold/cut funding for BLM unless they raise the size of the event.
    The BLM is a govt agency that serves various functions. They have much bigger issues to think about other than burning man. It is (I’m sorry) really stupid to threaten funding to a govt agency because some people didn’t get tickets. Really. Some perspective is needed. If I were a congress person who was asked to do this I would give you a stern lecture about some of the serious issues that the govt needs to concerns itself with.
    This country is in a lot of trouble, the supply of burning man tickets is way, way, way down on the *bottom* of the list of things to fix. Really.

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  • Colin says:

    If you have magazines like Vanity Fair writing about Burning Man, international magazines in France, Italy, Germany, etc., I’m pretty sure demand has gone up… I’m not sure what many of you think happened. The lottery was there probably because of this demand in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if close to quarter of a million people were thinking about Burning Man this year. 250,000 to 60,000 tickets? What do you expect BMorg should do with this kind of situation? I agree, they could have left it the way it was in the past, that’s totally reasonable. But it’s hard to imagine what would have happened with that because of 250,000 people wanting to go…

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  • Sayer Oftheobvious says:

    Was there anything wrong with the original method? I mean…REALLY? What reason was there to mess this up for so many people? No opinion of yours can justify it, as it is crystal clear that you have no line of sight or felling to the repercussions of such a foolish decision, BMORG. I hope you people have the decency to refrain from being possessed by some insane “ideal” and clean up the wreckage from this catastrophe.

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  • Dog Rancher says:

    What happens if BLM reduces the attendance to 40K?
    Who will get screwed again STEP up and bend over and f__ked again.
    Read the back of the tickets if you have one or the stipulations,exclusions and what you have to agree to before entering BM

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  • sadly burning man is not deaf friendly as all vblog or easy to following or access for deaf as I trying getting into buy ticket that I am involve in Reno C.O.R.E. less than 1/2 of people that our people are in project has no tickets and I am deaf and have been hit mostly hard time to follow up wit that and also on website that Burning Man offer as I know other outside people really abuse with that only bad people get what they want while loyal and good people cant have … wonder is there Murphry Law hit all of us qq

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  • John Oliva says:

    I did get a ticket in the lottery and here is what I think would the right thing to do since they have admitted that they screwed up. It is simple, start over. Cancel all orders filled in the lottery, refund those people. Open registration for 1 ticket per person, name on it. Fist come first served.
    No tickets have been issued. I got 2 tickets in the lottery and would think this would be fair. I am sure there would be people who got tickets in the lottery and not be happy about having their order cancelled, but since BM stated that only 40k of the 120k that requested tickets got theirs, then the majority (80k) would be happy.

    I do agree with Halcyon about it being a demand issue, but I also think that random lottery doesn’t allow for the first come first served. We are all used to most events offering this type of system and it works for almost all of them.

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