Over Labor Day weekend, 70,000 people were trapped in the middle of the desert by a series of freak rainstorms.
It was touch and go for a few days, as it was unclear when the weather would clear enough for everybody to safely evacuate. Supplies were dwindling. There was no access to clean bathrooms.
If those 70,000 people had been marooned in a small South Sudanese city, nobody would have laughed at the unfolding of a potential mass tragedy. But those 70,000 people were trapped at Burning Man, and so it was hilarious.
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TikTok and Instagram allowed everybody a front-row seat to the misfortune of 2023 Burning Man attendees. I learned about something called “playa foot,” which can happen to a person who goes out in the Black Rock City alkaline dust barefoot and doesn’t properly wash with a water-vinegar mixture.
I saw lifted Jeeps half-swallowed and abandoned by gray sludge. I learned that environmental activists had attempted to block the entrance to the unpaved road that leads to the Burning Man site, and that entitled attendees attempted to run over them with their gas-guzzling campers.
I saw videos of attendees who seemed to be operating under the misapprehension that people were rooting for them. One model/influencer posted a TikTok bemoaning her expectations of the event versus its muddy reality; all of the top comments were strangers proclaiming “Love this for you.”
Dub Kitty and Ben Joos, of Idaho and Nevada, walk through the mud at Burning Man after a rainstorm turned the site into mud, Sept. 2, 2023.
Trevor Hughes/USA Today Network via ReutersVideos of white people with dreadlocks struggling to wheel mud-caked novelty bicycles through the rain got millions of views. Local newscasters covering the event could barely hide the gleeful twinkle of schadenfreude when they reported on the “shelter in place” order, as more rains approached on Sunday. All of the people who had paid $1,300 to charter a private flight to the “leave no trace” event were stuck in a lightly toxic mud puddle for days.
All but one Burning Man attendee (who tragically died) has since evacuated Black Rock City, and thus the celebratory zeal around the libertarian hellscape disaster stopped short of gratuitously cruel. Yes, there are plenty of non-contemptible Burning Man attendees—I only know one of them personally, but I’m sure there are others out there.
It’s rare for the bubble surrounding the oblivious techbro wealthy and the self-indulgent leisure class onto which they glom to be permeated by reality. The Burning Man washout showed—publicly and with righteous rage—that many people aren’t simply not rooting for them, they’re actively celebrating their misfortune.
Something has shifted in the public reaction to wealthy people’s disconnect from reality. I remember when all those movie stars enduring lockdown in their mansions released a video of them all taking turns singing “Imagine,” and we kind of rolled our eyes, collectively cringed, and moved on. Now, people are starting to turn on the rich, and the rich seem confused.
The Man structure looms over the Burning Man encampment after a severe rainstorm left tens of thousands of revelers attending the annual festival stranded in mud, Sept. 3, 2023.
Trevor Hughes/USA Today Network via ReutersNobody seemed more confused this week than Oprah Winfrey. The billionaire faced backlash after teaming up with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to raise funds for victims of the wildfires in Maui. Good idea, right?
“We were so concerned about what was happening in Maui,” Winfrey said in the video, The Rock towering over her shoulder like an Ionic column. “And we were texting back and forth. And I read this article that Dolly Parton had given money in her community. And I said, ‘I think this is the answer,’ and you said, ‘I think this is the answer.’”
The Rock nods, “I said I love it.”
Winfrey and Johnson go on to introduce The People’s Fund of Maui, a charitable effort to raise $20 million for people impacted by the fires. Winfrey and Johnson had kicked the effort off by donating $10 million of their own money. All that was left was the other $10 million. And that’s where you come in!
“We are honored to start this campaign with $10 million and ask for your help in donating to those who have lost their homes. We thank you in advance for your contribution,” read their Instagram caption.
The fact that Winfrey and Johnson are worth a combined $2.83 billion and they were asking normal hundredaires and thousandaires to chip in was not lost on viewers. Winfrey donating the other $10 million herself would be the equivalent of a person living paycheck to paycheck donating a Pumpkin Spice Latte to the people of Maui. Winfrey now claims that thousands of donors have contributed to the fund, but hasn’t disclosed the actual numbers.
On one hand, this is a tacky ask. But on the other, if the people have turned on Oprah “You Get A Car!” Winfrey, the woman who probably at one time had a Q-score high enough to shatter the self-esteem of any of her contemporaries, none of the rich are safe from the public’s scorn.
Before Elon Musk acquired Twitter, the South African-born billionaire was largely thought of as an eccentric weirdo, who was nonetheless a bold visionary revolutionizing auto and space travel.
Hundreds of Burning Man attendees wait for information about when they will be able to leave, after a rainstorm turned the site into mud, Sept. 4, 2023.
Trevor Hughes/USA Today Network via ReutersNow, after several months of spending his days using his $41 billion social media gambit to broadcast a bleeding desire to be seen as funny, the prevailing belief among people paying attention (who aren’t his desperate sycophants) is that Musk is an emotionally arrested fraud who used inherited wealth to buy a claim on innovations that pre-dated his input.
He’s an aspartame genius with a creepy obsession with female fecundity and a propensity to lie about everything. His high-profile business thrashing has led some to question whether the uber wealthy are actually huge fucking dumbasses. A compelling theory.
Anger at the wealthy does not cleave along partisan lines. “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony Music came seemingly out of nowhere and has sat atop the charts for weeks. “I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day, Overtime hours for bullshit pay.” While social media hype can be manufactured and astroturfed fairly easily, there’s no known evidence that Anthony’s song wasn’t his own solo creation, and there’s plenty of evidence that his message of frustration with a rigged and dead-end system has resonated with a lot of people.
Millennials are entering middle age, and many of them are realizing that they will likely never be able to afford a home, or have the families they want.
Signs point to irreversible climate catastrophe being upon us, thanks to decisions made by generations that will be too old, too rich, or too dead to experience a consequence.
The Supreme Court eliminated affirmative action and stamped out student loan debt relief, right before summer recess, a chance for them to join their billionaire sugar daddies on ethically inexcusable gratis luxury vacations.
There are no repercussions. There is no justice. Meritocracy is a lie the wealthy tell themselves to project morality onto a system that exists solely to preserve their unearned status.
The system has always felt unfair to the people who it was not designed to benefit. But now, that unfairness has led to a level of disdain for individual rich people that I haven’t seen since the financial crisis of 2008.
Regular people are not only indifferent to bad things happening to rich people, they make no effort to hide that it delights them. Senate Minority Leader and multimillionaire Mitch McConnell experiencing what must have been a scary medical event has been turned into a meme about toddlers pooping. If there was an Eat The Rich clock along the lines of Manhattan’s Doomsday Clock, we’d be ticking pretty close to midnight.
David Brooks recently waxed philosophical in The Atlantic about how America got “so mean” and what can be done to fix it. Per usual, Brooks flew within 200 feet of the point and then got distracted by the sound of his own voice.
Brooks does not seem to see that America has “become” mean—which is expressed in part by delighting in the misfortunes and humiliations of the wealthy and powerful—because the wealthy and powerful got what they have by flouting the rules that the rest of us are expected to follow. Brooks suggests that a moral education is necessary to keep our nastiness in check, but what’s actually necessary is for there to be consequences for the people whose success is entirely attributed to cruelty, greed, exploitation, and excess.
Nobody became a billionaire through kindness. And nobody with power actually suffers any real consequences for being a malignant prick.
In this reality, it makes complete sense that the height of comedy for many people is the delight that comes from watching rich people eat shit. Laughter with no regard for civility is a temporary balm on the indignity of daily life as a member of the non-millionaire class. Until the system itself changes and remedies this, we’ll always have playa foot.
