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RULING_OUT_RULERS

                                              September 10, 2006
                                              December   5, 2006
                                              February  14, 2007

Any definition of Burning Man
had to include a definition of
what is not Burning Man, and            BURNING_PHILOSOPHY
it's all a mess of improvised
hacks, a very impressive job
of juggling in the face of
circumstance, but never driven
by any statement of principles,
to speak of.


At present corporate sponsorship
is currently forbidden.

But one of the (very weird) hot
topics this year (2006) was
whether the BM administration          Why would anyone do this?
might consider accepting
corporate donations with the           As a loss-leader, figuring
proviso that the sponsors would        that once you've got them
get no advertising out of it --        addicted to the sugar, they'll
their name would appear nowhere.       cave-in later when you threaten
                                       to remove it.
This year a number of people
got the bright idea to try to                     No logos *this* year,
use Burning Man for some                          but they'd be guaranteed
"guerilla marketing"...                           within the next two years.

There was one camp apparently
run by an underwear company
that was trading people
underwear, offering their
product in exchange for
whatever they happened to be
wearing.

One guy standing around in the road
handed me a small widget for no
apparent reason -- there's an old,
and very stupid custom (that's going
out of favor) of bringing tiny,
useless "plya gifts" to offer to               Often "plya gifts" are
people, so I figured he was one of             given in symbolic trade--
those guys.  It turned out to be a             like wampum to the injuns?
carabiner key-chain with the url of
a website engraved in it -- oddly
enough it had some sort of
idealistic ring to the name, as
though you were supposed to think it
was a non-profit or something, but
that's insane, non-profits don't
have the cash for that kind of
stupid promo item.

On one side of this
thing it said
something like:

   buildabetterworld.com

And on the other side it said:

   MADE IN CHINA


In any case, these manuevers really are no-nos,
but they're also -- at present -- relatively
small, low-grade pieces of sleaziness...  it
will be interesting to see what happens if the
trend continues.

If there's a backlash, if they attempt
to create and enforce rules to fix a
perceived problem, then we can end up
with interesting difficulties like
deciding whether the long-standing
"Death Guild" camp is engaging in
forbidden commercial promotion of the
"Death Guild" San Francisco night club
event.

So "Death Guild" might be
a difficult edge case...
there are probably others like that.

   I heard many people
   complain about the
   presence of a Hare           In these circles, everyone
   Krishna camp on the          seems to know someone who
   esplanade.                   got sucked into this cult,
                                never to return.
     The complaint usually
     took the form:                They're about as welcome
                                   as scientologists at a
       "What if this was           science fiction convention.
        a group of Christian
        evangelists? Would
        they have been given
        quite such a prominent
        location?"

       The problem that I see
       with this: what if they
       hadn't used the name
       "Hare Krishna" and just
       described what they're
       into doing?

          "We will lead sessions
          of group chanting in
          an attempt at achieving
          spiritual enlightenment."

          Who would have reacted:
          "Oh, they just don't
          *belong* at the Burn!"





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