Is Silicon Valley Over Burning Man? (Replay)

0:00I'm Kent Lindstrom, co-founder of 8BitCapital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in the software startups of the future. We focus on AI, cybersecurity, and fintech. I'm going to take you behind the scenes in Silicon Valley. This is the Something Ventured Podcast.

0:24All right, guys, welcome back. We have a... Oh, how are you doing? We have... It's the time of year where Burning Man kind of rears its head over the horizon in Silicon Valley. And classically, half of the town, San Francisco at least, decamps for the desert for a multi-day art and we'll call it technology festival. And this is a replay. Michael White and I talked about Burning Man, mostly made fun of it, but explained it to a few years ago when I thought as we come up on another Burning Man, I would replay it. I think there's three ways to maybe think about this one. One, if you don't know about Burning Man, you got it.

1:11It's just such a interesting, specific, crazy, impossible that it happened thing. It has a really interesting history. Started as a kind of more artistic and then became, violence is not quite the right word, but sort of anarchistic. Think people shooting flaming gallons of diesel fuel across the desert and shooting guns from the back of pickup trucks. And that changed over time, but you'll see how that happened. Number two, the second way to think about it is, is it over? What was it of a moment 10 years ago? Burning Man was a thing such that Mark Zuckerberg went, the Facebook CEO, The Google guys, Larry and Sergey, took Eric Schmidt, the person who eventually became their CEO, as a test as to whether they could hang with him.

2:08And so the second question is, is it no longer cool? Is the new wave of AI types hanging out in San Francisco too focused and dialed in and too AI maxing to be worried about Burning Man? And I think the final way to think about it maybe is just this. is it something unique to Silicon Valley, this blend of creativity and art and technology such that it is, that it appeals to people. But anyway, it's a fun topic nonetheless. Thank you so much for listening to the Something Ventured podcast. I'm Kent Lindstrom, of course, your host. I hope you enjoy this one.

2:50Hey folks, this is Kent. Thanks so much for coming back. This is the Something Ventured podcast. We'll get started in just a second here. I realized on this episode we were so excited to get onto the topic, which is a lighthearted look at Burning Man, which you'll see in a second. Burning Man, the big arts event, we'll be generous and call it that, that occurs in the desert to which all of Silicon Valley absconds for a week every year. Michael White is the guest I talked about Burning Man with Michael is a Silicon Valley attorney representing all kinds of startups and larger companies in their entire life cycle of being a startup and getting acquired and going public.

3:36Worked at Wilson Sonsini, which is one of the big ones, and some smaller, more boutique law firms like GCA, where he currently works. Anyway, the guest, Michael White, one of our more popular guests. The topic today, a lighthearted look at Burning Man. Enjoy it. See you soon. All right. Welcome. This is the Something Adventure podcast. I'm Ken Lindstrom. I'm your host. My guest today, again, Michael White. How are you doing? I'm fine. How are you doing? Good. How are you doing? In this podcast, I explore the reality behind the Silicon Valley headlines as I sit down with the people who are shaping the way we view the world online and Beyond.

4:12Welcome back. Thank you, sir. People, so I've done like 20 of these things now. 20? Yeah. All right. No residuals yet. No syndication. People like it. People have been listening to them. Well, okay, hundreds of people, not thousands of people. I don't want to know how much hate mail you're getting. Well, after this episode, we will. Oh, yeah. Because we're going to do the modern jackass version of discussing Burning Man. That's right. Neither of us having been to Burning Man, who better to discuss it? First of all, I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet. Exactly. So this is going to be the modern jackass version.

4:46So if you don't know modern jackass, the concept is that when you talk about something you don't know about. Yes. And people do it all the time. And if there was a magazine called Modern Jackass, you'd be on the cover. And just to give you an example of modern jackass, for those of you listening who are thinking, that's not me. if you think that like trans fats are bad like explain why trans fats are bad and you're like well they're fats but they're trans you're just a jackass you don't know in a complex society you cannot be an expert about all of the decisions you make exactly you need to choose what to assume is reality exactly and um so and then speak about it authoritatively even though you don't know what you're talking about yeah exactly oh so before we start i thought i should mention we're missing Coheed and Cambria today.

5:36That sucks. The heavy metal band. So for those of you who don't know... Aren't you insulting them by calling them a heavy metal band? Aren't they a heavy metal band? I don't know. I don't think they would categorize themselves as a heavy metal band. What would they categorize? So if you don't know Coheed and Cambria, this band, they're good, but they're, they like, they're writing an epic story. Yeah, baby. So if you go to one of their shows, it's like... It's a rock opera. Dark Star 4, The Civil Wars, The Milner's Son. That would be like one of their shows We're missing Coheed and Cambria Let's see I was going to mention I thought I would mention it Because we covered Silicon Valley on this show And in podcast time we never mentioned That the actor who played Christopher Evan Christopher Evan Welsh is the actor's name Who played the Peter Thiel character Passed away And he was a very key character in their whole story It was just spectacular He was so damn good It was kind of a sad tale.

6:35Yeah. And what are they going to do now? I mean, they just have to pretend that that character goes away. Are they going to actually kill him on the show? It's crazy. It was one of those things I was watching. This guy's really good. Oh, yeah. And he's like 42-year-old or whatever. And he passed away. So sorry about that. That sucks. Speaking of Silicon Valley. Yes. This year, Silicon Valley goes to Burning Man. They do? Yes. Holy crap. They were there filming. They were? Yes. Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, at least Burning Man hasn't sold out yet. There's nothing commercial here. I was watching the movie about it called Spark.

7:10Spark. And one of the things... So Burning Man, so the reason we're talking about this on the Silicon Valley podcast is because all of Silicon Valley, all of it, leaves San Francisco, absconds from San Francisco in the last week of August. Right. And everyone goes to the desert. That's right. Elon Musk claims that Burning Man is Silicon Valley. Holy crap. Meaning that if you agree with him, then you agree that Silicon Valley has hijacked Burning Man. Yeah, I believe that. That's, by the way, the kind of thing that Silicon Valley would do. Yes. That's like our thing. Well, I'm going to have to credit the person who wrote this, but Nick Bilton is the guy's name.

7:51He wrote a couple of weeks ago in the New York Times. and his thesis was that the two things that people in Silicon Valley do best are make a shit ton of money and then pretend that they don't care about money. Check. Which is exactly what has happened to Burning Man. That's exactly what Burning Man is. Well, to start out, I guess we'll describe Burning Man a little bit, but to start out with, one of the interesting things about Burning Man this year is like the rich versus the whatever the hell everyone else thinks there is. A Burning Man ticket costs$500? $500, I think. Something like that. And you need to be able to take a week off work.

8:29Right. And in most cases, more because you're preparing something to bring with you, you know, your art piece or your camp or whatever. Yeah. You know, these are things people work on for weeks or months ahead of time. So in a world where the average person makes a dollar a day, all of y 'all at Burning Man are the 1 % or the half percent. Right. We can argue over which part of that 1 % you're in, but life is pretty good. You know, actually, that's the funny thing is in that documentary, Spark, at the end, they show Burning Man Africa and Burning Man whatever. It's a franchise. Yeah, exactly. It's a franchise now.

9:06But the people in Africa, I imagine, are not having the same experience with Burning Man. I imagine not. They're like, well, every day it's Burning Man for us, really, because we all live in a desert. Yeah, right. Oh, we get to go find water in the desert. That's right. That's not that fun. Like, really? That's not that entertaining. The only difference is we're burning something this time. And you guys have trucks that bring the water to you? Right, we're carrying. If you have extra trucks that bring water to you, could you send some of them to Africa? That's right. The concept of an extra anything is foreign to them.

9:41So Burning Man starts in 1986. It starts on, I thought Ocean Beach. I was reading it was Baker Beach. I believe it was. I think you could see the Golden Gate from where they were in that documentary. Yeah. And some guy decides to go burn a man on the beach. Yep. And over time. For no reason. For no particular reason. And over time, this grows and grows and grows. And becomes big enough that. And there's different arts organizations that kind of hook up to it. And eventually it becomes big enough that the authorities in California, and generally things burn here, our hills burn. We don't do that.

10:24You can't be doing this. Damn it. And so somehow they find their way to the Nevada desert and start burning things in the desert. That actually, by the way, is sort of an underrated genius aspect of it, which is, you know, what we're really trying to do is something where no one will tell us not to do it. Well, where can you do that? In the middle of the desert. All right, let's do it. Weirdly, the desert is controlled by one federal government. That's right. The Bureau of Land Management. If you get the right permit, you can do anything you want out there. Actually, I got to say, there was, I had seen that documentary, but I rewatched a little bit of it last night.

11:02It's called Spark. It's like a Showtime thing, right? Spark colon a Burning Man story. Yeah, it's a real good high-def history of Burning Man, if you're interested in it. I love the way it was shot. They clearly were working closely with the people that organized it, because they were very sympathetic to them. And even had access to everything, because what they did have was a lot of clearly VHS videotape from the very early days. Yeah, that's right. And in re-watching it, the funniest thing that I saw was a half a second of video from the first Desert Burning Man after they had moved it off the beach.

11:47Yeah. Where they were describing how little they actually had out there was a few tents. But there was a truck, a pickup truck, with two people in the back speeding across the desert, one of them shooting a gun in the air. I saw that. But you know, it's funny. I was asking a friend of mine before. I was like, okay, so the idea of Burning Man is you go and you self-express. Right. Right. That's the thing. And I was like, okay, let's say that your form of self-expression doesn't take, as I understand it, one of the two forms of self-expression, which is dressing like a steampunk or wearing faux fur.

12:24What if you're like, you know, I don't do it in my normal life, but I like shooting guns. Right. Exactly. That's my thing. joking and then you see that apparently it was a pickup truck cruising across the desert and that guy had a damn gun i know it when i see it that is funny that was crazy i thought yep so and by the way those were the two things that i didn't know about burning man before we started talking about this was number one it did not start with some ideal some plan it literally was guys burning shit. Right, exactly. With no sort of unphilosophical under, you know, current or subtext at all.

13:02No story to tell, no right, no religion, no anything. It literally was, we just want to go someplace where we can do whatever we want. Exactly. And it started with, I want to burn a man on a beach. And the other thing that I didn't realize was, not only was it not an artistic festival, necessarily from the beginning, but it was this group of sort of counterculture weirdos who just, sorry, that was not a pejorative weirdo. I was being complimentary when I said that. By the way, it starts in what? Well, the 80s, 1986. Late 80s, yeah. And then the 90s is when it kind of comes to the fore. So we're not in a real counterculture time here.

13:39No, no, but that's the thing, the second thing I learned, which was these are clearly people who are out of time. They are, it's the late 80s in Silicon Valley, And they are organizing theater pieces on the steps of City Hall. It was called the Cacophony Society, I guess, or the group that really launched it. And the funny thing is that it was the same. They weren't a political group. They weren't an artistic group. They were literally just acting out. They were just people acting out. And I'm like, oh, I never really knew that about Burning Man. Because, of course, the stock and trade of Burning Man for the last 20 years has been, you don't get it.

14:19Yeah. Right. Well, if you haven't been, you don't get it. Like, what? I don't get that you want to go to the middle of the desert and do whatever you want to do? I think I get that. Use your words, guys. That's right. It is funny the number of people come back from Burning Man and they're like, I can't explain it. I just, it's indescribable. No, it's pretty easily described. It's like, really? Like, Lewis Carroll was able to describe entire fantasy worlds inside his head. You are presumably an artist, so the one thing you can't do is describe an event you went to. That's why we need to describe it, apparently, having not been there.

14:53You can take a picture, too, and then show it to me if a picture is worth a thousand words. And so what essentially does go on, for those of you who haven't been, is in the desert. People create these incredible, I mean, really pretty incredible art installations. It's a sharing economy, which means people set things up where they simply just give away whatever it is. We'll make mojitos for, you know, just take them. We'll give you massages. And apparently thousands and thousands of thousands of variants of that. Right. But before that happened, there was a year that I didn't realize in this film where they lose control of it.

15:29Unbelievable. Well, I think that was. They think it's over. Right. I think that was a peak of the certain original ethos of it. Yeah. It seemed like maybe they misrepresented that in the documentary, but that seemed like, oh, pre, I think it was 1996. Yeah. Pre-96, it was a thing that was less formal and more guys in the backs of pickup trucks with guns. Right. Yeah. That guy had a gun. Yeah. And then after that, it seemed, I don't know, it seemed less artistic in a way before. And maybe that's just the way the documentary made it look because clearly that was a turning point for the people organizing it.

16:14But it may have been peace and love and fun before that. It's just they seem to show that as the dark days. Yeah, the year they show, and it's the year where they kind of go, as some of them were saying, they don't really explain how this transition happened. And this would be very interesting. But the video they show, it just looks like the worst looting scene you've ever seen. It looks like a riot. It's they're burning things. They're clearly being unsafe. People are running up to the fires with gallon jugs of gasoline. It's clearly just a kind of orgy of anarchy. It was anarchy. And clearly not.

16:52And then the people who run it are like, oh, we might be responsible for this. Right. You know, somebody gets hurt or killed. That was the year a couple people died. Yeah. In a separate incident, not in the crazy anarchy. Right, the separate incident was somebody on drugs. Right. By the way, which this movie is eerily silent on. Well, like I said, they're sympathetic to the organizers. They do not focus on the drugs. It's not mentioned. But they do say somebody on drugs, like, runs over a tent and kills a kid in a vehicle, runs over a tent. And then, mystery, mystery, mystery, somehow Burning Man emerges on the other side.

17:25a much more civilized thing. Right, a much more organized thing. And, you know, that's, well, you know, we talked earlier, you know, that if you're sympathetic to the people who are organizing it and you feel that they have lost something because they all talk as if they're losing or lost something, that's when it started and it was inevitable, you know. They speak in the documentary as if, oh no, we're sort of being bombarded with the real world and real world problems. And yeah, a couple people died and we've been doing our best to try and make sure that we have a minimal infrastructure. But the idea is, yeah, do you get it?

18:08This is what happens the more people you bring out to the desert. And a lot of people who are into Burning Man like to talk about it as if it's something separate from society because that's how it started. But what they don't realize and what I think they should step back and take a look at is they are society. It is society. Look at it. The biggest joke, I think, of the whole thing is as you watch them go through this evolution where they're like, we can't be anarchists. We might need some rule. It's like reading like Lord of the Flies backwards. Get it? Yeah, you think you might need some rules.

18:44And then they're like, we also kind of need a bureaucracy. Yeah, we need some infrastructure here. And then all of a sudden it's like, you know, they told you this in college. Like you didn't have to go through this whole experience to learn how a society works. You've rebuilt this. You've got your police force. That's exactly it. You've got your DPW, your Department of Public Works, all the work. And it's just like they're living in this fantasy world where, oh, no, this is not society. It is completely separate from like, no. No, you just built your own society. You've got your own rules and your own crap.

19:15And then later on the richer people showed up. Plug and play. Although it is funny. They talk about the rich people showing up with the plug and plays, but famously the Google guys, Larry and Sergey, took Eric Schmidt, Burning Man. Sure. To interview him. What was that, 98 or 99? They've been selling out longer than, you know. That's what's funny. And that's true. Actually, you know, in the article that I was talking about earlier in the Times, the, you know, those guys, Sergey and Larry, they're held up as real burners. You know, those guys are guys who get it. They've been going for a lot of years.

19:52They're not the new nouveau riche, nouveau nouveau riche who are bringing their RVs. And they actually held those guys up as guys who do it right, which may or may not be true. I have no idea. But that's the idea. You know, when you started talking about it, it made me think, like, oh, I have a bit of personal experience tangentially with Burning Man. And it just hit me as I was reading this article about plug-and-play camps. And plug-and-play camps are basically the – rather than building a – so the general concept is you go – I mean, here's the cliche. You raise money for an art project. You build an amazing piece of art.

20:31You take it to the desert, and you experience whatever you experience for a week, and you kind of rough it in the desert. That's right. And the participant, the burners, the participants, they rough it. They, you know, you're sleeping in a tent or in the back of a car. But there's always been a group of people who takes RV, a large group of people, because you can't rent an RV in Northern California that week to save your life. That's right. That's right. But now there's a thing where you take huge, basically what you would call a band tour bus and 10 of them and they circle up. Which is the real point of contention.

21:02But we should back up and explain. So there's a concept of a camp. And a camp is a group of people who work together to, again, like a society. Exactly. They work together to feed, clothe, and bathe themselves for the week. and then they tend to have a theme like we're a certain kind of a dance camp or a camp where you bring your children or about free love or whatever. And the plug-and-play camps are someone else comes. They're like a Sherpa. They set everything up for you. You fly in. Which is the new innovation. You fly in and you're rich and you experience it and you hang out. That's what plug-and-play means in this context.

21:38And actually they were really careful in the documentary not to seem horrified by it, But there was a woman who was trying to explain, it's not that they don't want to decorate their own bicycles and create their own costumes. It's just that they want to show up and have the experience. Like, so you're saying that they're posers who want to come. Well, the funny thing is my personal experience was I worked for a law firm who, it was a young, trendy, hip law firm that was bought by a larger firm. And we, you know, one of the funnier things that happened was the old stuffy law firm didn't quite know how to deal with us, but they knew they wanted this young, trendy law firm.

22:21So they bought us and let us for a good six to eight months do whatever we wanted. And we talked them into a lot of crazy stuff, one of which was one of the partners who was in this community in San Francisco decided he wanted to rent an RV and take some young associates to Burning Man. Oh, man. And so that's what they did. And the associates that went with them were like half from our young hip firm and half from the big old stuffy firm. And they are exactly who the people who love Burning Man are worried about and the infiltration of Silicon Valley. Well, here's the problem. That was the year 2000.

23:03That was not last year. Oh, this is where they sold out. This was a long time ago that this has happened. And I just kept reading this thing about the plug-and-play cams and Silicon Valley in Viltrina. I thought, yeah, that was a decade and a half ago that that happened. Yeah. There's a really funny video online, which is one of these sort of like one. It's where the two cartoons are talking to each other in that weird electronic voice. And the one guy says to the other, like, Burning Man sold out. He's like, you've been telling me that for the last 10 years. It's like, yeah, but this year they really sold out.

23:38And then when you watch that movie, The Founders of Burning Man, they've got their own, like, what you would call in the NFL, a luxury box. They've got their own area. Exactly. It's like the Founders area. It's like, okay, you're doing the same shit as everyone else does when you get rich and famous. You're like, oh, I got mine. I want my little rich people area. That's what I just couldn't help taking from this whole thing. is like, for those who claim Burning Man is dying, it died a long time ago. And what you're doing in the desert every year is not what you think it is. It actually kind of struck me as funny that the blog post that you had sent me about, just briefly describing this blog post, it was a guy who'd been going for years and had been camping with his friends and this year had passed a luxury camp.

24:32with a circle of buses that no one was allowed in, and he passed a sign that said service entrance, and this offended him greatly. And so he decided he was going to steal the service entrance sign. Excellent. That's what Burning Man's about, it's stealing signs and shit like that. He thought that that was just the epitome of absolute antithesis of Burning Man. And so it describes. But the funny thing was, that's what I kind of got was, well, as far as I know, Burning Man has been dead for decades. But there are still people who go every year not realizing that. And, you know, they sort of either have been ignoring this or not being offended by it because inclusion is part of their thing.

25:19And they even say that in the documentary. It's like, well, you know, having billionaires at Burning Man brings the message out to the world about what we're doing. Yeah. Nobody knows what you do. That's right. Yeah. The world needs to know. It's a drug dance party in the desert. Right. A cool art project. Right. Exactly. Now, you probably don't do that every day of your life, but it is funny. People come back from Burning Man. They talk basically like the people I knew who dropped acid in college described their experience. It's like it's transformative and it changed their life. Right. They all became lawyers and went to Wall Street.

25:51So everyone comes back from Burning Man. They're like, you changed my life. I say, hey, what are you doing? I got my kids. That's my job. You quitting that? No, it just changed my life, though. The other funny thing is, you know, you talk about the, oh, this isn't a society. This is, you know, anarchy or state of nature or whatever. These camps that even the ones who have been going, you know, that are highlighted in the documentary, they, oh, yeah, it's about 100 of us. Here's my question. let's say you have those hundred people and you really are part of the early burning man ethos about this is this is pure and what we're doing is you know we really the 10 principles that they talk about we really adhere to those right why do you have to do it at burning man if you took those hundred people yeah to another place in the desert on a different week yeah you'd probably have as good or better an experience than you're having you know i i just imagine you know has these burning people get older, they're probably just going to be sitting there in their lawn chairs yelling at the kids to get off their lawn because you've ruined Burning Man.

27:00You don't have to go there. Well, the experiment is take whatever, let's assume people do drugs there, take whatever drug you do there and just do it here on a Saturday night. Right. Or go to another part of the desert on a different day. Yeah. We have dance parties. And by the way, the funny thing, too, is as people describe it, I'm like, I feel like we've been here before. Native Americans describing their experiences in the desert with peyote, the beans in the 60s, right? Absolutely. Everything that's old is new again. Oh, of course. But I do get the separating yourself from the civilized society.

27:39I mean, what they are looking for, and I don't begrudge them for it, is to get away from the law. I mean, they are literally trying. They want to do drugs. Yeah. And apparently some want to shoot guns. Yeah. And they want to set shit on fire. Great. I am all for that. And as a matter of fact, I think there should be a desert where people can do that every weekend of the year. Well, I think that's all deserts. Well, exactly. Exactly. I think the fact that the federal government has been complying with this for 25 or 30 years or whatever, how many years it's been going on, is awesome. Yeah. But that's the thing.

28:13Why does it have to be one week? Why does it have to be one event? The thing is, as we were talking about earlier, yeah, you have a society. You just don't know it. Yeah. Well, like a really well-run society too. So one of the interesting things that I got out of the movie was that, or learning about Burning Man, is now, months before it starts, an infrastructure team shows up. Right. That's pretty much like the Army Corps of Engineers, as near as I can tell. They lay everything out. They have safety standards. And the most amazing thing is that all of the art installations you see, I don't know what people imagine.

28:52like that people show up the week before and put them up. Right. They come in tractor trailer trucks. A hundred containers. It's like being in the docks of Oakland looking at this thing. Right. And there's a professional guy running it. He's like, this is what the trailer is for, and this is what that trailer is for, and there's a team of people. Year-round. It's like a military operation. It's actually pretty impressive. Right. Well, actually, I got to say, you know, even though the documentary itself was very sympathetic to the to the founders and the people who run it today, not necessarily just the founders.

29:29There was a very poignant, very ironic scene. There's a lot of irony in there. Oh, it is. It really is worth watching just to learn about Burning Man, but also to see the ironies that are everywhere. But the one that I think was very creative of the people who did the documentary was they go and they talk to the one guy who just said, I'm not going to be part of an organization that puts on Burning Man. I'm an anarchist. That's the antithesis of anarchy is to create an organization and to actually have infrastructure. But they talked to him. He's clearly in probably his mid-60s or maybe late 50s.

30:08I'm not sure. And he says I took my son to Disneyland Yes Wasn't that after the anarchy? Yes, this was after And they show Snow White's castle With the fireworks show going on Which is They did it intentionally To recall the Burning Man Which now has fireworks Around the Burning Man And he even said You know what? You understand when you go to Disneyland that it has rules and organization and you sacrifice whatever anarchist or whatever the adjective of anarchy is. You sacrifice a little of that to watch the fireworks show at Disneyland. And I thought, oh, wow, what a statement that is about what they are actually doing.

31:03Right, that was the connection they made. He had the Anarchy Year with the flames. Then they showed Disneyland with their version of flames. Right, right, right. And Disneyland is your legacy, people. By the way, is that the same anarchist that owns the trademark and sued them for it? Oh, did he really? Yeah, the guy who owns the trademark sued them. Oh, you're kidding. The legal thing is crazy. I didn't know that. Because I think, I don't know if it's even a non-profit or if it is a non-profit. Oh, it has to be a non-profit. I don't. Well, I think it's becoming an... This is total modern jackass.

31:36I have no idea. Neither. No, but the funny thing was, he says, I don't want this to become a money-making organization. Yeah, well, too late. Yeah, exactly. They must be making money. You charge$500 a ticket to 60 ,000 people. That's money. The money walks in the door. That part's really weird. When you start looking, there's LLCs and this, that, and black this owns black that. Right. But I think I read they were going to become a nonprofit, which would suggest they have not been a nonprofit. Well, why would they need to be? I mean, there's nothing non-profit. I mean, there's nothing. There's no reason to have taxes.

32:10You can just be a profit-making organization that pays taxes. For tax reasons, as long as you're paying your taxes, you don't have to be a nonprofit. You have to be a nonprofit if you want to stop paying taxes. Yeah. And then they become enormously challenged by, I think. Oh, so in 2009, the population of Black Rock City shrinks. after the 2008 recession. Oh, really? And then 10, 11, 11 become, they sell out the tickets for the first time. Wow. Because the BLM is like, there's a limit. Right. And so for the first time, they encounter scarcity, which they also learned about in college, but shocks them.

32:44That's right. And they go nuts, and they can't figure out what to do. Right. And so they put together a lottery. Now, one of the funny things is a lot of the people write in, like, that can't get tickets. Right. And they're assholes. They're all like, fuck you, screw you guys like it's like wow what a bunch of lovely people when they're not on the flyer well not only are they you know probably again i i'll i will now reveal my true feelings toward burning man you and i have joked in the past about the greatest week in san francisco yeah is always burning oh yeah because all of the douches are out of town gone and i do have that pejorative feeling about it which is that that that very thing the fact that they had to go to a lottery and what it did was inspire hatred among people who thought they had some sort of god-given right to go to burning man is all you needed to know and maybe they were by but the the founders who are reading off the letters and emails whatever none of the emails were like man you know i i understand but boy i'd really like to if there's any way i could get in that'd be great they were just like i care like i used to go it's like what gives you the right to exclude people from Burning Man.

33:55Yeah, it's like, I saw the Rolling Stones in 1972, man. Like, why can't I get in? Well, you know, like, that's right. Well, I have to say they, you know, that when you're talking about, you know, hello, you're a society now. Yeah. That was what the first thing they really had to acknowledge was, wait a second, what attracts people to this thing is these art installations that are worthwhile, but you can't build it if only half of the people that build it got tickets. And what do we do? And all of a sudden, that actually, it sort of hits the nail right on the head. But in the documentary, it was, you need to make a decision.

34:35Is this a festival? Are you curating? They used the word curating, and they were all arguing about whether curating is the right word. We're not curating. The other one's like, oh, Jesus. Yes, we are. Somebody, exactly. Somebody needs to admit that that's what you're doing. Of course you need to. Yeah. You need to. But that's the thing, all that existential angst, you know, if you're looking at this from the outside, it's silly. And by the way, that part was very funny because if you work as any kind of a manager, there's nothing to be mad at. Like you have a really popular thing and everyone can't get in.

35:09That's right. We have scarce resources. You understand that. This is a known problem. You raise the price. You make more of them. Like you make it two weeks and you can buy week one or week two. There you go. Two men. Or you solve your problem, which is you want people who build the art installations to have a preference, which is what they did. Exactly. Yeah. That was the only solution. So they hated that solution, but then they do it. And then somewhere else toward the end, the guy, one of the guys says about that. So what they do is they say the people who are contributing, building the art installations get special access to tickets.

35:42And the guy who founded Burning Man goes, yeah, it was crazy, but that was the best thing we've ever done. because it means it shows, I forget how he said it, but he says something like, you can't just come to Burning Man and take, you got to contribute. And you're like, you just close the loop. You just create a meritocracy where those who produce are those who get the resources. And a government authority who decides who is producing. Exactly. Thank you, drop the microphone, walk away, you just completed your college project. And you killed Burning Man. Yeah, exactly. All at the same time. That part was just fantastic.

36:18At the end of the day, he builds the society that he didn't want. That's exactly it. And that's why I say, you know, they're the only people that don't know that it's dead. Yeah, exactly. And there is the whole other dimension. Speaking of jackassery and speaking about things you don't know, I don't see, again, just not knowing really what goes on there because I've never been to Burning Man. I don't see how it benefits Silicon Valley at all to have taken it over. You know, the funny, as I was saying, and I wish I could keep remembering the guy's name, his name, Nick Bilton is the guy who wrote this good piece in The Times.

37:03You know, his joke about, you know, Silicon Valley people are great at pretending that they don't care about money. that he explains, and he was the one who described what Elon Musk was saying about Burning Man and how it is Silicon Valley. Why? Why is it Silicon Valley? What does it add to Silicon Valley that a bunch of you rich idiots go out to the desert and take hallucinogenic drugs? What does that do for Silicon Valley except provide a place for you all to go talk to each other? Well, it's a big networking event. Exactly. For sure. Can't we have a networking event somewhere else? Why did you have to take over Burning Man?

37:41That's what I don't really get. I think we just take the networking road show on the road to the playa with drugs. Maybe that's it. In a crazy simple way. It's like, hey, I'm giving myself, you know, I want to just go do drugs. Right. And that's not okay. So I'm creating, there's this whole concept in this context. Right. It's okay. You know, like. What was that thing in the 80s? That used to be called college, by the way. No, no, no. What was the thing in the 80s was like an outward bound sort of thing where all the executives would get together and go on survivalist. Outward bound. Yeah. And so this is like the modern equivalent of that is you have to expose yourself to your coworkers at your most primal.

38:22And therefore, we're all going to go to the desert and take drugs together. Again, we did the acid test in the 60s. Exactly. So the big irony this year was the rain. So if you believe in any kind of a spiritual force behind Burning Man. That's right. That spiritual force does not like Burning Man. No. In the middle of a desert, in the middle of a drought, it rains. And by the way, in a throwback to Woodstock, the rain shut this thing down for two days. It did. It stopped it completely. As I understand it, Woodstock went on for two days in the rain and the mud of Woodstock, New York. That's true.

39:01And frankly, even the highly corporatized, highly organized second Woodstock 30 years later, whenever that was, 20 years later in the 80s, went on despite the rain as well. Yeah, exactly. They just don't know how to deal with it. God is not like Burning Man, that's for sure. No. Now that said, we can probably bring this one home, but I was going to say, it looks kind of cool. I feel like I'd like to go. The art stuff looks pretty cool. I hate the EDM. Electronic dance music. You've got to be kidding me. I could literally do that. Well, I've always, and again, being the ultimate jackass, I don't go to raves, never went to a rave.

39:42But I can only guess that the reason that it's okay to listen to EDM for hours at a time is because you're taking drugs. It's the only possible explanation. That if you're not, there's no way you could stand it. Yeah, I had something on my TV and like one of those Palladia things came on where it was like Ibiza or something. Oh, yes. And it was the guy. Skrillex was going on. Whatever the hell it was. And I like being completely sober in my living room. Right, exactly. I was like, that guy is touching his computer less than I do when I'm doing nothing at work. That's right. And he just kept doing the same thing over and over.

40:20He would take a riff up to like 300 beats per minute and then drop it down to a bass line. That's right. Seriously, like you guys fall for that over and over. It's winking. Yes. Literally, if you played guitar that way, you'd be playing one note every 40 seconds. Right. Like pretty much. No, no, I'm convinced nobody rolls out of bed in the morning and puts EDM on. Well, unless they're like, yeah, I guess they don't roll out of bed. They're just up all night. Yeah. No, that's literally what I mean. Sober in the cold light of day, nobody listens to EDM. But I've got to say, the art projects do look pretty cool.

40:54The teapots float through the desert. That is actually what my – and when we very first started talking about this, I said, and I still believe it now, I could never go to Burning Man. And it was confirmed in reading all this stuff and watching that documentary. Basically, they are saying, we don't want spectators here. There should be no spectators. And that's exactly why I'll never go. You know what we'll do? We'll go. I think you're right. I would love to be a spectator at Burning Man, but they don't want me there as a spectator. They want me participating, which I would never do. My favorite installation, one of the funniest things, was the guy who had, in the movie, this guy gets like a milk crate and a board and builds a little ramp.

41:39It probably took him like 12 seconds. You remember that part? In the middle of the desert, he puts up like a milk crate, and he gets a couple boards and just makes a little ramp out of it. It probably took him like 12 minutes. And his piece is like, hey, everybody on bicycles, come jump my little ramp. This is my art installation. And it's like, are you going to judge it's not legitimate? He spent two minutes on it for materials he found around him. That's exactly it. And I thought it was very funny. Someday the people who run Burning Man might have to decide whether he gets to stay or not. It's tricky.

42:12So we'll be that guy. We'll be like, hey, my art installation is that I'm not doing art. Exactly right. I am a spectator. That's my art. Can you not accept that? I'm the observer. You need to be observed. I call it voyeur. Yeah. Yeah, what do you think? And my thing is khaki shorts and T-shirts. You know what's weird? In real life, I'm a steampunk. That's true. But I come here, and I just want to wear khaki shorts and a T-shirt. I like to cut shoes like that. I wear goggles to work and drive a crazy, chitty, chitty, bang, bang car. Yeah, I weld all day. Yeah, exactly. But I don't build anything.

42:46I just make art. Oh, man. All right, bro. I feel like we've done Burning Man justice. What else can you say about Burning Man? Well, all you can say is now no one has to go to Burning Man because we just described it perfectly. Save you a trip? Really. Holy crap. This is a high value you get from this fight. That's right. You now don't have to go to Burning Man. You should watch that movie Spark if you haven't seen it. I recommend it. That's the thing. It's excellent. You know, when we started talking about making fun of Burning Man, which I don't have any problem with. Yeah. I will always make fun of the cool kids.

43:12Oh, yeah. But when I watched that documentary, I thought, you know what? And apart from making fun of Burning Man, it was a well-done documentary. It really was. Especially visually, because that's what they captured. And the high def in the desert is beautiful. So I recommend it even if you don't care about Burning Man. I liked it anyway. By the way, this podcast has been exactly like Silicon Valley. We take a break from talking about Silicon Valley. That's right. Go to Burning Man virtually. This is the Burning Man podcast. Should we give out the Twitter handle so we can get the hate? Oh, yes.

43:43Oh, yeah. Please hate me. Hate me. I am Kentland, Modern Jackass, Kentland, K-E-N-T-L-A-N-D, on Twitter. I am Michael S. White on Twitter. All right. Hey, thanks for being here. By the way, you know, I won't say, like, who the top ones are, but when people listen to the podcast and give me feedback, people who don't know you say they really enjoy your podcast. Oh, see, that's the thing. That is the story of my life, people who don't know me. People who aren't your friends. Now, they disagree with you. No, that's the thing. I want people to send me their hate because that's how I engage. I love a good back and forth.

44:14Oh, man. So that'll happen. So where on Twitter do they send the hate? Michael S. White. At Michael S. White. All right. And Kent Lind. This has been the Something Adventure Podcast. Burning Man, Jackass Edition. Modern Jackass. Thank you very much. R.I.P.