I used to be the type of person who enjoyed dating in New York City. A summer afternoon rendezvous perhaps, one that begins with the smell of sticky sidewalks and Aperol and ends with the cheerful patter of synchronized footsteps.
Instead, I have been subjected, time and again, to Burning Man — specifically, to men who feel the festival experience has imbued them with esoteric meaning, a purpose which they never seem able to fully articulate.
I ask this sincerely: Am I the only one in the city being lectured on dates about Burning Man?
Not to be confused with post-festival passion or the harmless “Were you at Burning Man?” inquiry. I’m talking about the drawn-out and increasingly predictable “How Burning Man changed me” speech that inevitably ends with the sentiment: “If you haven’t been, you just don’t get it.”
My most recent encounter involved an ex-vegan, A.I. software developer I had met a week earlier at a small music event in Brooklyn. He was cute, witty and a good conversationalist. He had potential.
Yet, I hadn’t even finished chewing my first mouthful of pasta before his 37-minute tale began. (Yes, I timed it.) He fiddled excitedly with a loose dreadlock as I once again fell victim to an eternity of spiritual mansplaining.
The formula was all too familiar. A compulsory mention of the 10 “core principles” of Burning Man, which, in more obnoxious settings, have also been referred to as “the truths.”
“Inclusion is the core of our culture” he said. “It’s written in the charter.”
His affectation was so profound that I was rendered speechless.
Inclusive? According to the BBC, attending Burning Man often costs a minimum of $5,000. And what kind of person my age, early career, has nine days to spend frolicking in a desert?
I think back to a moment from the month before, when mid-date I had pulled up a 2022 census of Burning Man attendees. It found that the average Burner was a white American man who makes more than $100,000 annually. I learned those facts didn’t always land well, so I kept them to myself.
The software developer’s monologue then shifted to another Burning Man principle: “Leave no trace.” Aha! This is the moment where most people think I’ll come around, given that I work in environmental policy.
This isn’t the first time the leave-it-better-than-you-found-it rule has been fetishized by those who describe it to me. “The Nevada sand felt like coming home,” I’d heard some guy say at a bar a few weeks before, as if Mother Earth was relishing in the aura of the woke desert community.
Bleak flashbacks to the many skipped Hinge profile pictures of men standing, hips thrust, in ski goggles and without shirts fluttered in and out of view.
The environmental argument is one I find especially bizarre, given the famously negative planetary impact the festival has.
Wasn’t it just last year when hundreds of protesters demanded that private jets, single-use plastics and the burning of propane gas be banned? And might we be forgetting acknowledgment of the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, whose original territory includes Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man is held?
I cleared my throat in preparation, emboldened by NPR’s Burning Man segment featuring exasperated tribal spokespeople talking about all the trash left in the festival’s aftermath.
But the software developer continued talking about Burning Man’s sustainability with an attitude that nauseated me. “It’s your kind of vibe — I barely saw anyone eating meat,” he said, swirling his vegan pasta, probably thinking it would taste better with cheese.
I do wonder if the tech billionaires flying in and out on their private jets find it difficult pretending to resonate.
And jet planes are one thing, but what about the 70,000 people who take commercial flights to and from Nevada every August, generating, according to reports, more than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide?
To be fair, not every burning mansplainer has failed to note the festival’s environmental catastrophe. Rewind to the first Burner I had ever met on a date: A 32-year-old software developer from Britain. It was a week after Burning Man, and the memories of the festival were still vivid.
“Anyone pretending it’s an exercise in environmental living is kidding themselves,” he said as we contemplated our pickle shots. But he maintained that the celebration warranted the damage, claiming that “the uniqueness and positivity” of the social environment outweighs the guilt that might be felt for running generators for a week.
I asked why he picked pictures of himself at Burning Man for his dating profile.
“I’ve always seen including one as signaling, ‘I’m up for adventures,’” he said.
Two years later, “No Burners” is a trending prompt on Hinge, a fad of which I’m highly supportive.
Evan was the first (and only) guy I’ve been on a date with who actively avoided Burners on dating apps. “It’s like giving to charity and telling everyone you’ve done it,” he said once, as I smiled. “Burning Man appears to be more about the outfits, photos and date-worthy stories than the experience, and everyone I’ve encountered who’s been is intolerable.”
Regardless of trending prompts, I fear the frequency of Burning Man mansplaining is only increasing. And for me, these occurrences only continue to present themselves in a variety of awkward ways.
Not long ago, I agreed to meet a seemingly normal non-Burner stranger at an Upper West Side speakeasy. His profile was desert-free, and the frosty season provided some assurance that there would be no mention of the upcoming summer festivities.
Everything was going decently well until I noticed his feet — which were bare. Bare as in he was not wearing shoes or socks. It was February.
His explanation? After attending Burning Man, he had committed to building a new routine based on the “authentic actions” he had learned there, one aspect of which included running to work (at a hedge fund) barefoot.
I have only found the strength to abort these encounters twice. Most often, I suck it up and put my active listening skills to use.
I’ve asked about the campsites.
Friends of friends have recalled horror stories of difficulty finding shelter, waking up with third-degree sunburns from sleeping on the sand or cozying up to hallucinating strangers just to get underneath their soggy tarp.
As it turns out, you can avoid those horrors by signing up for a luxury camping spot, but at an extravagant extra cost of course.
My software developer date described his own lavish accommodation to me in detail: a decorated campground powered by propane so that music, air conditioning and light shows could run 24 hours a day.
“I’m curious to know your thoughts on unlimited generator use in respect to principal eight,” I said, out loud this time. I knew I sounded like a jerk, but the hypocrisy was deafening.
These reflections come with no self-prescribed Kumbaya. I am all for promoting nature connectedness, artistic expression and the occasional psychedelic drug. But I can’t help but feel discouraged by this wave of first-date virtue signaling. It encourages a toxic spiritual superiority, one with no basis in reality.
In explaining to me how they’ve discovered community, stewardship and self-awareness (all great first-date topics, no doubt), Burners are, in my eyes, demonstrating just how deeply buried they are in an echo chamber of unrecognized privilege and empty consumption.
Maybe we need to think a little deeper about the fact that we live in a world where some people will claim “it’s worth every penny” to ride around the desert in a raccoon suit, on acid, in a fire truck that’s shooting flames. And that it’s this story — raccoon suit and acid — that gets featured on a dating profile to impress a stranger.
Sorry, but I doubt there can be any spiritual symbiosis influencer to influencer. True growth and self-discovery require engaging in dialogue, experiences and cultures vastly different from your own. If I sound judgmental, I am. I think Burning Man is a dishonest scheme profiting off real people, many of whom are genuinely lost.
And I don’t blame them. The promise of inclusion, sustainability and self-expression is alluring. Social media has manufactured a generation of alienated, wasteful and insecure young singles desperate for tangible meaning. And so, this is what we are left with.
Personally, though, I’m eager to hear a new story. A first date is a blank slate. Pick any topic you like. The last movie you saw. Your favorite kind of bread. Anything other than an experience that has been prepackaged and commodified by interlopers in the Nevada desert.
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