But nothing is ever black and white, and one other observation is that organisers actually do have control, and are not bound to cross a point of no return.
Take Leipzigs Wave-Gotik-Treffen [1]: This is one of the biggest Goth and Dark Culture Festivals in the world. Events are decentralized all over the city, so the city of Leipzig turns black for a couple of days every year around whitsun.
Lots of creative people are around, so similar to Burning Man in Germany it received huge media attention during the past couple of years, just by being well suited for a photo series. Search for "Viktorianisches Picknick" (Victorian picnic) on GoogleImages.
Yet they only sell full time (4 day) tickets. Due to the popularity for years organisers have been urged to introduce day tickets, but they have refused to do so because they only wanted to serve to a dedicated community. They could have made more money and rent better concert halls, however decided for keeping the community. The festival stayed small, no more than 30.000 attendees each year, not many big acts, it actually still has "Treffen" (meetup) atmosphere for Germany's goth scene, and the creative people continue attending.
You can't really do that. Burning man is different from a normal music festival.
I've never been to Burning Man, but I've been to other similar week-long psychedelic festivals, like Boom in Portugal and it's definitely not your 'normal' rock music festival.
First there's the 'non-commercial' side - no companies or logos or other publicity displayed anywhere, then there's the international aspect - literally, it's a gathering of people from all over the world. Then there are the drugs, the virtual lack of alcohol, the psychedelia and the 'unsanity' that people experience for a week, which manifests as all kinds of forms of art, music, yoga, martial arts, shamanic rituals and so on.
'Leave no trace' means people are conscious and careful about the place, so the festival ground is always clean.
People change, they become non-competitive, extremely nice and generous to each other - sort of like a sect, but in a good way :)).
So the festival is not just a great amount of fun and suffering from weather extremes, but also a very 'spiritual' and introspective experience - in which I personally regain hope in humanity..
Boom Festival is always a powerful experience, but 'burners' who've been at both claim Burning Man is even more powerful.
Of course as these events gain popularity, more and more people are going to be attracted to them and inevitably that's going to change the 'old spirit' of the festival.
But this is the rule of life - old gives way to new and it's been like this since the beginning of time, right ? :).
I think Fusion would be a more apt comparison.
Or the Chaos Communication Congress, though that's admittedly not a tent festival with tents?
I don't know — I think maybe it was. Not on some absolute scale (although I doubt that no single aspect of the past was absolutely better than an aspect of the present), but on a relative scale. I recall reading that part of the reason most of our musical tastes don't really change after high school is due to physical and emotional components of discovering music young vice old. Can't that be the same for other experiences too?
Imagine you're twenty-four at some event: you have food in your belly, friends around you, and you're having a ball. You don't really have any other responsibilities other than making it back to work once your vacation is over.
Now imagine that you're 36 at the same event: you have a wife and a few kids, food in your belly, friends around you, and you're not quite having a ball. Maybe you brought your kids, and maybe some aspects of the event aren't kid-friendly. Maybe you didn't, and you've got that constant back-of-the-mind worry that all parents have. Maybe your wife is with you and you're both enjoying the event, or maybe she's with you but you had an argument, or maybe she's not with you because the event's not her thing, and you miss her while still enjoying the event, or maybe she's not with you because you had a fight and you just want to leave the event and apologise. Meanwhile, the project back at work is still going on, and while you have faith in your subordinates, you know that they really do need you for a few key decisions every week, and you worry that they might be blocked until your return.
You're 48, at the same event. One of your kids is driving now. You can't believe the law lets someone that unaware of his circumstances to drive, and you're worried that maybe you shouldn't let him, but you're worried that if you don't he won't learn to notice his circumstances. He's not at the event, and you've got that constant low-level dread every parent has that he'll kill himself or someone else on the road. Maybe you and your wife have kept your relationship strong through all the increased cares and responsibilities, or maybe you've let it slip because there's only so much time in a day. Meanwhile, you've realised that some of the hopes you both had for your lives will simply never come to fruition: at this point in life, some doors are forever closed. And then there's your career: you've reached a high point in terms of capability, but you're still just one man. Most of your subordinates are good and trustworthy, but they don't see the bigger picture. You try to show them, but they're too caught up in the trees to see the forest. And then there's D—, who was a great and loyal guy, but you raised him up a little fast just as things began to go wrong in his personal life. Now he's underperforming, and honestly you don't believe that he can get better. You want to repay his loyalty, but you also want to repay the loyalty and hard work of all those D— is shortchanging.
Which of those people is going to enjoy the event better?
According to Socrates it was [0]
[0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now-love-...
[0]http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children... [1]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Youth (bottom)
"Nobody ever goes there anymore - it's too crowded."