Whats next

Predictions about the burn ahead are fun but are way less interesting right now than what is going to happen to Burning Man after the burn this year.

The event is now in a post scarcity era.

Anyone can get a ticket anytime they want again. This is going to change a lot of things. Just on a first cut, participant things that will change dramatically next year but that we will start to see creep in this year:

1. Less camps - People were setting up and running camps just to get directed tickets, and well now that motivation is gone and there are just going to be less camps this year, next year, and beyond. People will drop the org bullshit involved and just get their friends together in open camping, stop the sham events and just do their thing. Also lots of camp leads this year are going to get burned hard holding extra tickets and will not be to pleased about their involuntary donation to the org. 2. Less volunteers - Lots of volunteers were in it in large part for guaranteed access to tickets, so they might roll back their contribution at least in part. 3. Less infra - Less guides (chomp, rockstar, etc) less apps (iburn, camp maps, etc), less things around the burn because just less enthusiasm around the whole thing. 4. Less ticket worry/fraud - Burning Man tickets are not some magical thing that has increased fraud rates. There are plenty of events every single day that have $500+++ tickets and experience very low fraud rates. Everyone should just chill the fuck out now and just handle tickets to the burn like any other event/concert/show tickets they buy/sell/trade/broker for blow jobs with. If fraud happens, just get another ticket at gate and credit card chargeback that shit and 20 minutes later move on with life.

Now the org. Well this is where the really interesting shit is going to happen after the burn this year.

The org is realllly really hoping that either Sergey or Elon come in and save them with consistent $5m or $10m annual contributions or that this is just a temporary weather blip in demand and they dont have to cut or adjust anything. That they can just keep on doing their incredibly bad bloated undisciplined management and it is just like fine. That might work! Who knows! Billionaires do billionaire things! Both Sergey and Elon love K so you know whats another $5m to keep the party going? Especially from a guy that spent a cool $1b on his last 3 year marriage.

So if that check does not come in, and well if the downward spiral in event attendance continues then things get very interesting fast.

The $2m, $5m, $7m budget hole in the orgs $50m largess starts to hurt real fast. And well Marian and the board of friends of larry + the new diversity appointments well it is not the team you would want if you are not in an era of everything easily up to the right forever and real cuts and real management needs to be had.

It is easy to come up with a list of things that should obviously be cut (an exercise left for the reader) but how sloppy is the org going to be doing this? How much do they debase everything they have ever said about the event in the process?

Going to be an interesting ride...