this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023

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chapotraphouse

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The burning man shitshow is just further evidence that mass gatherings should be much more regulated. (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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70,000 people, all quarantined together in a fucking mudpit, rumor has it a highly contagious virus is spreading through the festival grounds and festival goers are walking around barefoot in the mood and are going to get all sort of nasty foot diseases. There’s food and water rationing in effect and really the only co conclusion I can get from this is that somebody is probably gonna die from this.

Like since covid I think we as a society realized but haven’t yet actually accepted is that large social gatherings are a societal danger and we shouldn’t be doing them for fun. Yes I never went out in college, my friend group consisted of my dnd group, normalize that instead of super spreader crowd crusher mass gatherings. My opinion on this is the same with guns and cars, abolition would be a good thing. Now I’m a realist, the people want their treats, sometimes a mass gathering like a protest is necessary. Can we at least all agree that there needs to be some change in the way we as a society do huge fucking events like this?

In conclusion burning man sucks, hippies aren’t communist.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like since covid I think we as a society realized but haven’t yet actually accepted is that large social gatherings are a societal danger

You had me until here.

So much of this is

no public health care
no emergency medical services
degraded utilities infrastructure causing a spike in sanitation problems
heat waves driving droughts which exacerbate all of the above

The idea that the problem is "large social gatherings" and not "failing social services and infrastructure" seems heavily misplaced.

Its like looking at the Superdome during Katrina and concluding the problem is pro-sports.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole point of burning man is to go somewhere that has no infrastructure. If they organised the same festival in Central Park, you'd have no issues evacuating 70k people.

It's just gotten too big and it should've never been allowed to grow past a few 100 people.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

The whole point of burning man is to go somewhere that has no infrastructure.

The idea is to build up something from scratch in the desert and then burn it all down and return to nature.

But what was originally a primitivist art show for regional pros - with a legacy community leadership and social expectations and some real medical and utility infrastructure - has dissolved in the face of a bunch of Silicon Valley party boys who just want a big rave in the desert.

Even at a few hundred, they'd have the same problems as the event is currently configured.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

isn't the virus part literally the trueanon twitter doing a bit?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

rumor has it

/thread

I agree with the general sentiment though, mass gatherings have lots of potential dangers and negative impacts on the surrounding area. A better organized society could probably mitigate that for the most part at least though.

They really should have planned for rain, not their brightest move to not have contingency plans for unexpected weather events.

[–] huskypenguin 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They knew it was coming at least a week out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They knew the heavy rain was coming to the desert where it couldn't be absorbed well and didn't prepare at all? Like not even the individual people going?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

you're not gonna stop mass gatherings of people. COVID isn't going anywhere, we just have to live with it like we do the flu. Are we just going to cancel having fun for the rest of time? I'm not gonna hole up in my house for the rest of my life.(unless youre immunocompromised and cant get vaxxed, which that just sucks).

Ive been to multiple music festivals this year, and ive been going to them since 2005. They actually restock soap and hand washing stations now. I've definitely seen changes in behaviors.

Now the main issue is having the festival in a desert 60 miles from the nearest gas station. That's just fuckin stupid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We shouldn’t have to live with influenza either, and we could totally drive influenza to extinction if we fucking tried.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

you're wrong, influenza isnt the same as polio. It mutates so like HIV/AIDS that makes it tough to eliminate. If you have a source that says otherwise though please provide. My light searching came up with many "no" answers for that.

[–] burntbutterbiscuits 1 points 1 year ago

Easy peasy, let’s vaccinate every man woman child bird, mammal, and fish on the planet.

You are talking out of your ass

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are better vaccines and anti-viral coming out against COVID, so this is just wrong.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

im confused about which part of my post youre talking about. im not saying dont get vaxxed or don't get new vaccinations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

COVID isn't going anywhere

There are sterilising vaccines and better anti vitarals on the way, so it'll definitely get better in the next two years. Also lots of us are living with vulnerable people. I'm definitely reading between the lines of what you're saying, and not talking your literal word. But please don't go to festivals, putting yourself at an infection risk, and then unmask at shops and mass transit where vulnerable people cannot avoid.

If you're one of those rare people that parties hard like COVID is over, yet masks everywhere else, then you're a champ.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

so it'll definitely get better in the next two years.

it only gets better when vaccines are mandated, and that aint gonna happen. Flu vaccine isn't mandated either, so that's why it's still around. If the polio vaccine had been an option that would still be around too. America at this point will always have 40% of the population proudly unvaccinated. COVID will keep mutating and stay around. I do everything I can and that's all anyone can do until we start tying people down and vaccinating them forcefully.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Multiple BM attendee here; it was amazing for a while. Stopped going in mid-‘00s, when the population crossed the 30K threshold, as rules started being imposed on everything, and LA industry people and VCs started showing up in plug-and-play camps. Even at that size, BRC was like the 5th largest city in NV for that week.

The size and attendee/intent composition is the issue. I would spend months thinking up what I would bring to share or show. I made a motorized art playa skateboard one year, before rugged motorized skateboards were commoditized, 2,000 cookies another year. But, there started to be a lot of what we called “tourists”—people who brought nothing to share, neither art nor stuff, and who were just there to experience Tweaker Disneyland for a few days.

And, the BORG that runs BM lost all sense of proportion and chased cultural cachet and thus scale, with all of the banality that comes with it. The first time I had to go through a bunch of hassle to get a tiny art vehicle officially registered with the Department of Mutant Vehicles signaled that we had clearly left the heaven of creators and entered the hell of bureaucracy.

Finally, the uploading of shitloads of photos and videos was getting annoying, and that was even before the arrival of smartphones, YouTube, and Insta. Instead of being free to do and say whatever, wearing whatever, and on whatever drugs, for some of us in corporate jobs, it started to be a concern that our BM extracurriculars would be immortalized and shared.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is why I stopped going to pretty much all music festivals. The types of people that go to those large gatherings just don't get it. They use the PLUR free spiritedness as an excuse to be selfish and act like a jerk a lot of the time. Everyone is such a vulture at those things anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We used to note in the mid-‘90s that ravers who kept mentioning PLUR were the often people who created the most drama around them.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

fuck cars 👍

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

large gatherings are already regulated by the law of FAFO

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The forest service spends over $1,000,000 every summer for the rainbow gathering.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

How much of that is cleanup vs how much is doing cop shit?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It’s funny

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

If it was just vain contemptible people receiving harmful consequences for their own bad decisions, I'd say let them, but yeah this shit is harmful to the local environment and is an opportunity for a disease to spread and mutate, Brace's twitter prank notwithstanding.

[–] burntbutterbiscuits 1 points 1 year ago

Y’all sound like a bunch of negative nancys. Don’t like it, don’t go…. Pretty simple.