> A phenomenon like Burning Man needs to be somewhat inaccessible to actually work. If it's too easy, it fills up with people who aren't committed enough. In the beginning, that inaccessibility was provided by the sheer obscurity and a somewhat remote and hostile location.
I suspect that the greater general acceptance of drug use is probably the real gating factor that dropped.
However, the primary issue has been that the Burning Man leadership drove it to this spot.
Are you leading a small gathering of burned out hippies from San Francisco or are you leading a cultural force in the broader society?
The leadership chose "we want to be a big cultural force", and you don't get there without broad appeal to the plebes. And the plebes nowadays include a boatload of wannabe social influencers on Instagram, Snapchat, etc. And that brings with it all the toxic "hot chicks" marketing garbage.
Furthermore, given many of the actions that the Burning Man leadership have taken in the past years, this smells like more than a little bit of hypocrisy of "Other people are getting paid and we're not getting our cut."