I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

> ...the festival I helped invent 36 years ago. Curiously, I get this interest even though I haven’t set foot in the Black Rock Desert since 1996.

Not doubting the headline conclusion, but I would have expected a better source than someone who hasn't been to Burning Man in literally 30 years. AFAICT, Burning Man was still very well regarded ~20 years ago, long after this founder stopped attending

Maybe he should stop going then and let others enjoy what they like.

As the author says himself, he hasn’t attended in 30 years. I understand some of the things he’s complaining about, but I don’t think that is the dominant experience of being there.

I think this has been obvious for many years now.

Burning Man is easy to hate on. I've never been.

But come on. The world kinda sucks. If a bunch of people want to go to the desert with no cell phone service and just do their thing, why do we care? If some of them need an RV to do it, and they aren't charging others, so what? That's awesome, and life would be better if more people had the ability to do their own flavors of Burning Man.

and he's been complaining ever since they stopped letting him shoot machine guns at teddy bears.

Everything small becomes big, and then gets enshittificated