Why people who haven’t been to the few recent burns (or any ever) feel obliged to comment on this thread.
And why they think their comments have anything to do with the actual reality? Isn’t _this_ what is called out of touch?
The origin of the thread is also quite ridiculous as pointed below in the comments, since when burning some oil became a problem? And since then condemning that is anything more than virtue signaling?
Now, to the actual topic, as somebody who’ve been to the recent burns (and no, I didn’t fly in on a jet and was not a part of the plug and play camp).
Last year burn was freaking awesome! A lot of people don’t realize, but BM Org actually stopped doing their events for 2 years. But you still can camp there legally. Just with no fires on the ground. So the community took the matter in their hands and organized a Renegade Burn. First year it was about 1.5k in size, second about 12k. And this is insane what can be done with no central coordination.
Instead of the burning man we had a great drone show of a man that brought some people to tears (keeping the spirit alive). There were no massive sound camps as before, but instead a lot of grassroots smaller camps with ridiculous music that made me laugh so much. Instead of the streets there were now islands of life in the desert with no fences. And instead of the porta-potties you now had to figure out your situation yourself.
It went mostly smoothly, my expectation was that in the end there will be a ton of crap and poo left, but no, we stayed till Tue and I haven’t seen anything like that (although I heard of some instances).
I am very curious what would happen next year if it keeps going like that, can this self-org sustain the larger scale or would it have to become the new BMOrg. But don’t think we’ll be able to see it as BMOrg takes back the reigns and runs the next one again, afaik. So unless no major covid wave again, we’re back to what we had 3 years ago (which is also a one-in-a-lifetime insane experience, just of a different sort)
Another anecdote that I find fun. Five years ago I’ve met a guy who was on 32 burns, I think from the first or second. I asked him the same question, how much it changed.
Long story short, it does change all the time. It’s in its nature and the nature of things. You either accept that or stick to your ideal picture of something and suffer. Anicca, “you can’t maintain reality to your satisfaction”, but it is still beatifull and powefull and full of love and I’m gratefull to all people who help and ever helped to bring it to life.