Welcome to the London Review of Books podcast.

You can unlock the entire LRB archive for free for 24 hours by visiting lrb.co.uk forward slash open.

Diary by Emily Witt

I wanted to go to Burning Man because I saw the huge festival in the Nevada desert as the epicenter of the three things that

interested me most in 2013, sexual experimentation, psychedelic drugs, and futurism.

But everyone said Burning Man was over, that it was spoiled. The event, which requires those who attend to bring their own food,

water, and shelter, and dispose of their own trash, was overrun with rich tech people who

defied the festival's precious tenet of radical self-reliance, with their over-reliance on paid

staff. Burning Man, which started in 1986 when 20 people burned an effigy on a beach,

was turning into a dusty version of Davos.

Old-timers lamented the rise of plug-and-play culture.

There were too many LEDs now, too many caravans,

too many generators, tech executives, and too much electronic dance music.

There were TED Talks. There were techno-libertarians. You couldn't see the stars.

I would decide for myself. I rented a caravan with six other people, a group organized by a friend in San

Francisco. If someone were to draw a portrait of the people who were ruining Burning Man, it would

have looked like us. With one exception, the six all worked in the tech industry. The exception was a

corporate lawyer. None of us had ever been to the festival before.

We paid a company from San Diego to drive our caravan to Nevada and get rid of our trash afterwards.

I ordered the items from the packing list online. Dust goggles, sunscreen, sun hat, headlamp, light-emitting

diodes, animal print leggings. I arranged delivery of a bicycle. My friends would bring food and

water from San Francisco. They all delayed their planning with the flexibility of people who don't worry about money.

...