Artists, Mavens, Carnies and Tourists

the inevitable arc of countercultural movements

In honor of the annual hoopla surrounding Burning Man, whether it’s done, just getting started, forever corrupted or as relevant as ever, thought I’d share a quick reflection on the nature of counter-cultural movements and a general pattern most of them share.

This sharpens our focus on identifying, participating in, and even preserving scenes we love, and maybe also helps us feel less bitter or disappointed when they follow their inevitable life arc.

(and h/t to Venkatesh Rao who shared a version of this thinking a few years ago)

Step One: with all edgy counter-cultural scenes, they begin with the artists.

Think Warhol’s Factory, early Haight-Ashbury, or Basquiat and Haring in the NYC 80’s. It doesn’t have to be visual art–could be music, could be alternative living, could be a radical new political philosophy (like anarchism or effective altruism), but in general, these folks are long on style and short on cash.

They are truly counter-cultural in the sense that they haven’t yet achieved coveted “product-market fit” they’re just doing their thing for love of the Game.

Step Two: the arrival of the Mavens.

These folks are high in cultural and/or economic capital and make it their business to spot the Next Big Thing.

For Burning Man, this was the Google founders and the Brothers Musk (among other early, edgy Silicon Valley types) attending the Burn back in the 90’s. First just as relatively anonymous participants, and then, increasingly, as sponsors of major art, theme camps, and even the organization itself.

(this was not Zuckerberg coming in to gift grill cheese sandwiches later in the game—he was a try-hard Tourist)

In general, the Mavens are a good thing for the Artists.

While some of the harder core early scene will deride cozying up to this lot as “selling out” some of the best (and savviest) artists will find a way to bridge the gap.

The move from dirt bags to artistes that can finally monetize the thing they were doing so long for free isn’t easy, and not that many of the original scene ever make it (visionary artist Android Jones is a clear example of someone with deep counter-cultural roots who’s made the jump to mainstream success-).

If you want to read what IMO is the best all-time dissection of this Maven dynamic, check out Tom Wolfe’s utterly masterful (and hilarious) takedown of Radical Chic in New York Magazine.

In it, he deploys the best of “god’s eye” New Journalism to take the absolute piss out of an Upper East Side gathering at Leonard Bernstein’s co-op hosting the Black Panthers, and the hijinks that ensue as the gathered furiously try to balance their WASPy privilege with the Black Afro Power of their guests.

(I’d submit that most of the elite bohemian gatherings around the world today lean more in this direction than they’ like to admit. High net worth folks who’ve collected just enough cultural capital and social impact folks around them to feel like they’re saving the world, but really, it’s the same party with the same photogenic cast of characters that’s been going on at the same country villas since before the Fall of Rome).

Step Three: the Carnies show up. (AKA the Sociopaths)

With the booster rockets, media and money of the Mavens amplifying the initial genius of the Artists, it’s never long before those seeking to profit arrive.

Like sharks or hyenas drawn by the smell of blood, they sense there’s easy life force to be harvested.

At first they lurk around the perimeter, sussing out Alpha status and possible weak ones that can be picked off.

Next they adopt the mannerisms, dress and customs of the Artists and Mavens.

In fact, you’d be hard pressed to pick the Carnies out of a lineup (they might even fancy themselves Artists or Mavens!) until…

They figure out a way to skim social, political or financial gain from the whole scene.

This was Bill Graham moving into the San Francisco Fillmore scene and turning Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Allman Brothers into top-grossing acts.

This was the boardshorts and lifestyle merchants coming into the North Shore and Malibu surf scenes.

It’s also all the “turn-key” camp founders at Burning Man, who quickly figured there was enough cachet at the event, combined with enough hardship and logistical challenges, that if you could solve for all that and have chefs, costumes, e-bikes and A/C on tap, you could charge the elites of Europe and SF/LA/NY 30-100K to roll on in and stamp their ticket.

Didn’t even have to turn a serious profit on the whole venture!

Just having all those high net worth folks as part of your scene, juiced to the gills on heart-opening, mind-expanding substances and edgy sexual exploration, and your social capital would pay dividends for years to come.

The ultimate networking event!

Step Four: the tourists (inevitably) start poking around.

I must admit, since writing Stealing Fire in 2017 outlining what I felt were some of the most meaningful aspects of Burning Man culture (notably, Burners without Borders disaster relief and Black Rock Solar alternative energy design) I’ve been a little taken aback by the number of folks who’ve said reading it was their inspiration to go to the Burn for the first time.

But given that I was emphasizing the pro-social sandboxing and a broader sense of humanist ideals, (as well as consistent rave reports of their experience which are always gratifying to hear), I’d reckon that was a halfway decent signal to noise to broadcast.

Far wonkier are all the life coaches and Instagram models that piled in after cell reception and live broadcasting from the event became possible.

What had been an isolated desert pilgrimage now became, like a pair of those infernal angel wings pained on downtown walls, a magnet for narcissists and their cameras.

Figure and Ground flip-flopped.

It used to be that showing up radically present as one more dusty fellow human being was the jam.

The art and art cars and camps were all there to host and delight the community gathered.

Then, creeping into the 2020’s as each year saw more star-fucking media coverage and better Starlink reception, an insidious shift started happening.

People weren’t making their own costumes, they were wallet-whipping them direct off Etsy. Utter neophytes could show up blinged out like Elven Lords or Mad Max bondage queens.

The art, which had always been so intimate, so subversive, so mind-fuckingly original that it couldn’t help but crack you open and crystallize your initiatory experience, now became backdrop for a be-costumed narcissist’s next Instagram drop.

And by last year, with the much-ballyhooed rainstorm and Chris Rock and Diplo on the back of a pickup, we experienced the first “extremely online” Burn.

In the past, there was relative radio silence during the week itself—just due to the limits of more primitive cell connection and upload speeds.

But last year things went recursive.

During the crazy rainstorm, enterprising self promoters were live broadcasting updates, which news outlets then ran, which those same digital Burners were consuming while stuck in the mud, informing even more live broadcasting…until the whole thing spun up and out of a Futurustic Desert Ritual and into the refractory hall of mirrors of digitized meme slinging.

Marjorie Taylor Greene even got in the act!

So…that brings us to this year, with Goldilocks weather after last year’s too wet and the year before’s too hot.

And much press about the event not officially selling out for the first time since 2010.

(But really, plus or minus a few thousand folks isn’t gonna even feel noticeable).

As one longtime crusty Bay Area Burner wrote on Reddit last week, summing up this Artists to Tourist dynamic almost perfectly

26 Years of attending the Burning Man Festival. 

I have witnessed this event grow from the Trashy Late-90's-Distopian Artist-Collective Anti-Captialist Psy-Trance-Infused Festival for losers it was in 1997,

into the Dark years of the Ultra-Exclusive JetSet-Celebrity UpperClass-Plug-and-Play Ticket-Scarcity-Mind-Set-Nightmare of 2019,

To the Inspiring Radical-Self-Reliant Grass-Roots Community-Based-Freedom-of-Self-Expression BORGless-Utopia Of  Renegade Burn 2021,

To the Empire-Ending Purification-by-Biblical-Flood Miracle of 2023! 

Burning Man is Not Cool anymore… and I think that is pretty fucking cool. This year is going to be Less Spectacle and More Festival.

Burning man is Healing, Things are changing, And I'm Still Ranting.”

So this year, all four of those characters are gathered—the Artists, the Mavens, the Carnies and the Tourists.

Just like every scene that goes through these phases and stages.

None are exempt. It’s a life arc that unfolds nearly everywhere you look.

There’s still oodles of magic to be found in those desert sunrises and sunsets, Martian mountains and salt flat dust storms.

There’s still tons of humanity, beyond the headdresses, filters and photo-shoots.

There’s still healing, grief and tears at that amazing Temple.

So a rule of thumb for this scene, and really, any scene that spins up out of our relentless well of human ingenuity…

Artists are to be encouraged. From Basquiat to Banksy, they remind us of things we’ve forgotten and point the way to the Adjacent Possible.

Mavens need to make sure they’re not just using Artists for Radical Chic window dressing and commit to actually supporting their efforts over the long haul.

Tourists aren’t to be vilified. They’re to be welcomed, engaged and initiated. Who knows, one of ‘em might be the Artist of What’s Next!

But about those Carnies tho…

Those fuckers, feel free to shoot on sight.