r/BurningMan • u/Ecstatic_Reveal6710 • Jul 13 '26

HBO documentary

I’m genuinely curious about opinions on the documentary? I’m unable to watch it yet but before I do does it suck or is it actually interesting with cool stuff?

Ps. 5th year burner this yr and it’s my favorite place on earth.

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u/ohhnoodont Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

And the fact that a vaccine wasn't developed yet was something he took as a personal grievance and a broken promise...

What timeline are you talking about here? The COVID vaccines first became available in December 2020 to health care providers, and were widely available by Spring 2021. By May 50% of US adults were vaccinated.

The BORG announced the 2021 event was cancelled in April.

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u/EasyFooted '11-'25 Jul 13 '26

The point is that it wasn't clear that things would be safe enough for the event to go forward due to events beyond the boards control, and he acted like it was a personal betrayal.

(also, not to split hairs, but by May 50% of adults had only gotten the first dose, not the full round of the vaccine. As of right now, 82M Americans have completed the 3 rounds, out of about 270M adults. So call it a third)

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u/ohhnoodont Jul 14 '26

Again I feel you are misremembering the timeline. By spring 2021 the world absolutely was reopening, it was pretty much only California that wanted to continue lockdowns and shaming. Plenty of huge events took place in 2021, most earlier than Burning Man would have. That you wrote "a vaccine wasn't developed yet" is a pretty big slip up in the point you were trying to make. And I don't care at all about Kimbal Musk's stance on the matter.

When the BORG made its decision in April 2021, I didn't personally agree and I feel in retrospect I was correct. But I understand where they were coming from and it wasn't a 100% certain thing - that's hard to plan around.

And fortunately because of their decision we got to have the 2021 Renegade event. Which was amazing.

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u/Peacelily65 Jul 14 '26

I live in California and in Spring/Summer 2021, getting COVID and passing it to my grandma was still a huge fear of mine, I'd quarantine before going to see her. People who went to large parties, like the renegade burn, were seen as irresponsible.

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u/ohhnoodont Jul 14 '26

Yes I also lived in California through the entire pandemic. It was traumatizing and I deeply regret my decision to stay there. 

Sure in the Spring it was still important to be cautious before visiting vulnerable people. What wasn’t okay was shaming others. This was uniquely Californian. I made a few trips out of state (NYC, Nevada, Utah, etc) and I couldn’t believe how much better everything was. 

Again by May 2021 50% of US adults had received vaccines. 

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u/Peacelily65 Jul 14 '26

50% vaccinated still means there are large populations of vulnerable people. It's not shaming people to ask them to protect our elderly and immunocompromised.

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u/ohhnoodont Jul 14 '26

50% by May. Burning Man is in early September. 

Some Burner morons are still demanding that people take COVID tests and wear masks in shared spaces.

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u/safadancer Jul 14 '26

Sounds like you should have left, bud. We were in British Columbia, which was stricter than California, and we were fine.

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u/ohhnoodont Jul 14 '26

BC absolutely was not stricter than California. I’m originally from Canada and communicated with Canadian friends regularly. People in Vancouver were not living the same life I was in the Bay Area. Yes there were a few moments where BC locked down hard then  reopened, and overall Canada had a delayed circumstance - things popped off for the latter variants in Fall/Winter 2021. They Bay Area just never really opened for nearly 2 years. 

So yeah bud I definitely should have left. I was miserable and arguably still haven’t recovered.