It feels important to note that most of the people at Burning Man, the week-long festival of “radical self-reliance” held every summer in the inhospitable Nevada desert, are not evil. But the festival, which draws thousands of people for its music, experiments in self-governance, revealing costuming and ready availability of drugs, has become a stand-in for a certain kind of self-congratulatory excess.
At least in the popular imagination, Burning Man has become associated with the kind of person who will rapturously tell you about their love for taxidermy, or polyamory, or electronic dance music, often while you smile stiffly and scan the room for an exit. Imagine a white person with dreadlocks: that person loves Burning Man. The clientele is heavy on privilege and light on self-awareness. But most of them, it should be emphasized, do not deserve to suffer. Their only crime is being annoying.
