July 7, 2002, modified August 10

To go through all of this would take all day to write, and all day to read, and I assume that we both have better things to do with our time. But, a lot of what we were seeing from BMORG and its hysterical fan club was pretty darned bizarre.

For example, in one thread on ePlaya, I got to see somebody who was calling himself "Truthteller" rebutting some urban legends that BMORG had made popular, including the silly old one about Playa dust eating through one's shoes. (Right, guys - we've all breathed it in, and lived, and yet it will burn its way through plastic and shoe leather). One Jim Graham of said organization did not enjoy being contradicted, or being scolded by one of our members for his rude behavior. After that, when "Truthteller" started up a joke thread, Mr. Graham used that as a pretext to continue his attack on Truthteller, via a conspiracy theory he cooked up in order to discredit this person he had lost an argument to. We, ourselves, found that we couldn't go anywhere on ePlaya without Graham launching similar attacks against us, and anybody else who had disagreed with him or his friends. As Mr. Graham put it himself, he would continue this campaign of defamation far and wide, because "that's just the kind of guy I am".

No argument there, Jim.

Rather disturbingly, Mr. Graham wasn't merely some random troll who drifted in off the Internet, though he certainly acted like one. He was (or claimed to be) BMORG's director for media relations! You know, the person responsible for public relations? Not surprisingly, the usual "me too" crowd joined in on the attacks, we decided that we had had enough, and left. Personally, I was left feeling more than a little angry about the situation, which I ended up being pulled into, despite all attempts on my part to stay neutral in the flamewars which ePlaya never seems to run out of. This was due to the fact that I had made the mistake of trying to do some of these people a favor, a mistake which I will never repeat again, considering the unpleasantness which followed.

There was a camp called "Xara", one of whose members (its director, I believe) was a regular on the board. Xara was a jungle-themed camp. By a (sort of) happy coincidence, one of my relatives had a friend who was a musician who specialized in African percussion. He and his group would tell whole stories, just through choreography and drum music. That may sound a little dry, but the crowd was mesmerized. This guy had studied in Africa, and was a serious artist. It struck me that if one wanted to celebrate jungle cultures, his act would be a great inclusion. Our friend from Xara seemed to agree. The next question was, how to convince him to go.

Think about it. Here I am, about to go up to this guy who I know has never heard of Burning Man before. (We're 2000 miles away, and Burning Man just isn't a big thing, here in Chicago). How do I convince him to travel all of that distance, at all of that expense, and then pay $200 on top of that, just to get in? Part of the answer was, that I'd have to have something visual to show him. Big surprise, as Burning Man is very much a visually oriented event to begin with. Locally, where I had seem films shown, people were intrigued; where they were absent, the reaction was one of "yeah, right". With this in mind, I posted a request for suggestions of good films to show, in order to sell the event. If I was asking for a "favor", it was only so that I could do one of their friends a favor.

No good deed goes unpunished. I would soon deeply regret my decision to help out. Somebody calling himself "Rickey Ricardo Smith" jumped in with a suggestion that I show "Pink Flamingos". I had heard of this film. Not only did it have nothing to do with Burning Man, which didn't even exist yet, when it was made, but it was one of the most disgusting films to have ever been directed by the infamous John Waters. How would showing this to my relative's artist friend make him want to go? A string of similar suggestions followed. I was getting mass trolled, and at least one of the offending parties (Bob Stahl) was a member of BMORG.

I thanked people for the constructive suggestions I got, then teased Mr. Smith about his suggestion, not being quite as gullible as he evidently expected me to be. I then made an effort to make sure that everybody knew that the thanks I did give was sincere, not sarcastic, and naively continued, thinking that I would be allowed to go about my business. How wrong I was. The board would soon go insane.

Even from the beginning, many of those reading, either came in with sarcastically inappropriate suggestions, like "High Plains Drifter" or "Dirty Harry" (recommended for its "sadistic violence"), or showed that they hadn't even bothered to read what they were responding to, such as when "Lamplighter Brien" told me what the best kind of film would be, to shoot my own Burning Man film. Not that the latter piece of information wasn't interesting, in fact Brien chanced onto something that (at the time) I wanted to do someday, but it wasn't on-topic. Burning Man only comes once per year, and Burning Man 2001 was over, so how could I possibly shoot a film in time to persuade somebody to come to the next Burning Man in 2002, even if I was already experienced and knowledgeable enough to carry out such a project? Brien had reacted without reading or thinking first, and this would prove to be exactly the problem on ePlaya.

Bob, one of the more influential regulars on the board, then did something that he had done more than a few times before - try to put an end to somebody else's efforts, in order to flex his political muscles. Absurdly, he tried to assert that Burning Man movies didn't exist, even though BMORG, his own organization, sells a number of them on its own site! In classic trollish fashion, he then retracted that absurd claim in his next breath, saying that if they did exist, that they didn't convey the whole experience. But, I hadn't asked for a film that conveyed the entire experience, I just asked for one that came the closest to doing so, a vastly different request. I quite rightly resented the fact that Bob was visibly trying to use his influence to put an end to what had been a very constructive discussion, and asked him to stop doing that. (Some weeks after this unpleasant incident that we're still talking about, I noted with some bitter amusement that BMORG's local appointee was holding a film festival of his own, and others were apparently doing likewise; so much for BMORG's sincerity on this point, when its membership chose to support Bob in his obstructionism, here).

Bob, as seemed to be his habit, responded by trying to mislead the reader who had jumped to the end of the thread about what it is that I had said. Quoting me out of context, he tried to create the illusion that what he and his friends did was what I had asked, adding that as a burner, I had to value every contribution. (Considering the lengthy history of personal attacks made against those who did contribute ideas on ePlaya and in other Burning Man forums by Bob and his friends, under a variety of login names, which we later found, this was an amusingly hypocritical complaint for Bob to make, and his friends to back him up on). I responded by rebutting his remarks, and expressing some well-justified irritation with his behavior; Bob wasn't making a contribution, he was creating an atmosphere that discouraged other people from making contributions themselves. How badly stoned would I have had to be in order to "appreciate" that?

Rickey Ricardo Smith, never one to give up on a prank, then tried to spin doctor in order to make his suggestion sound reasonable, later following with a comment about how stupid I must have been not to see the wisdom of his remarks, as he continued to try to make his prank work through sheer persistence. Here we see one of the differences between the Burning Man cabal and the old timers in other social settings. Trying to see what one can get the newbies to fall for and then laughing at their gullibility, while not very nice, is hardly unique to ePlaya or to BMORG and its friends. The difference is that in most places, if the newbies prove not to be so gullible, the old timers have the decency and the maturity to accept their defeat with good grace. On ePlaya, as we saw earlier with Truthteller, and are starting to see here, the old-timers respond by going for blood, which should tell one something about just how genuine those 'good spirits' are.

The usual "me toos" followed, with "President Haynes" (then signing in as "herself") ranting and raving, "Lamplighter Brien" trying to play the tough guy, tossing in a suggestion that I be killed, and Jim Graham speaking up in support of Bob's distortions. (Yes, this is the same Jim Graham who you saw go on the attack, even as he complained that people weren't seeing what an honorable guy he was, back when we were talking about Truthteller). Having had enough, I told these people off, and announced my departure. Taken in context, what these people were doing was not merely trolling and not merely abuse, but gross ingratitude, all too typical of the "counterculture".

Bob responded by lying outright about what I had said at the beginning of the discussion, while Brien continued to act like a middle schooler, trying to pretend that I was crying, "Techboy" (one of the moderators at chi-burning) explained the difference between anger and tears to this dimwit who didn't seem know that the Reagan administration was over, leading to Brien showing his true colors by chortling with glee over the fact that I didn't believe in resolving disagreements through violence. Techboy used the word "pacifist"; I think that the word "adult" would be more appropriate here. Not that there were many of those on ePlaya at the time. The usual handful of smug one-liner attempts to go with the crowd followed, not just on this thread, but on others.

One of the more objectionable attacks, albeit one done in a misleadingly soothing tone, came from Janna Denig, who I was initially going to work with on a Middle Eastern Themed camp. Willfully turning a blind eye to the abuse that Bob's side had already engaged in, Janna asked the person who was defending me why he was being so hostile, as if he had been hostile without any provocation or reason. This kind of willful cluelessness would soon be echoed by Actiongrl, who'd wonder out loud why we were being so unfriendly, even as we were being attacked on multiple threads. (You'll find those on other sites; no need to rehash them here. Suffice it to say that this thread wasn't the only one that we, as a group, had to be angry about).

This is about the point where the Middle Eastern Food Tent, as an idea, went away. Incredibly, I still had board regulars asking me about what I would be serving them, as if I would dig into my not-so-deep pockets to buy free food for people who had just acted like this, or worse, on a variety of threads. I certainly couldn't work with somebody like Janna, who had just tried to undermine somebody's effort to speak up on my behalf, by portraying it as an unprovoked flame. In fact, while lurking later on, I would discover that even leaving the forum wasn't enough to protect one against such a self-righteous complaint, as I would get to see "Lovely Rita" claim that entire sections of the board had been taken over by the flames I and two other people were posting! (1)

Tiresome reading, isn't it? Let's wrap this one up, quickly. "Techboy" called Rick on his spin doctoring, Janna seized on that as a chance to adopt a superior tone, and Techboy came back with a retort and a critique. Oxeon, who has made a career out of flaming others on ePlaya, then made a very telling remark before whining about the fact that his friends were being flamed back :

Look who's talking. But think about what he just said - "an attempted coup"? If we're all as free and equal on ePlaya as the local cabal likes to pretend that we are, how can there be such a thing as a coup? The very existence of a coup implies that there is somebody to overthrow. Here we see the key difference between the point of view of Oxeon and his friends, and those of us who they were attacking. We saw a discussion as being an exchange of ideas, so when Mr. Stahl would lie about what another person said, as he did here and on other threads, we had to condemn that. Oxeon, Stahl and the rest of the local cabal saw discussions as being an expression and continuing re-establishment of their power. As Bob said himself after being criticised for putting words in his opponent's mouth during the building inspection debate, "I'm just trying to do well"; ie. he thought it was OK to lie, because he thought it would work. (Wisely, he decided to delete that post a few days later). If, as so many will tell you in these forums after making no sense whatsoever, that Burning Man is about "making your own reality", then Bob and company express their power by lying, because in this way they insure that the reality that is made, is one of their own making.

However, the fact that the cabal's motives here are understandable does not make them any less twisted. In much the same spirit, "Lucky" would manage to set a new benchmark in arrogant stupidity in the discussion, first picking a fight by writing

which was a radically dishonest portrayal of the situation. The conflict on bm-chicago had been raised as an issue, not by one of us, but by the ePlaya's own Bob Stahl, who tried to use it to set up an ad hominem argument on another thread. The actual bm-chicago members merely responded - oh, and Techboy wasn't on that list, anyway. After trying to write a rationalization of a ludicrous suggestion which he made earlier, while trolling he finished in a haughty tone, saying

seeming to forget that it takes two sides to declare a truce, and that the only thing that one can do unilaterally is surrender; but that's exactly the point. These people weren't looking for peace, they were looking for conquest. Notice how, in this passage, having made no sense whatsoever, he now talks down to Techboy; he pretends to be trying to make peace, while he deliberately provokes the person he is speaking to. Techboy gave this person the answer he deserved.

The rest of the story is just more of the same, having less and less to do with us as time goes on, and Bob Stahl finds a new scapegoat, so I'll leave that for others to tell. I trust we're both tired of the subject by now?

My feeling after all of this was one of "do I need this?". Making some small effort to work for the community resulted in nothing but the so-called community on ePlaya giving me grief, as it put obstacles in my way, for the most part. This experience is one of the reasons why I came to shun online forums - while the behavior here was extremely unusual in degree, it isn't unusual in kind when dealing with "netizens". This is probably why it is like pulling teeth to get more people to even participate in such virtual communities. Who has time to deal with the trolls?

And it doesn't really take much to set the trolls off, as "Funky Bunny" would find out this year, when she innocently tried to barter costumes for transport on ePlaya, and got to encounter Mr. Smith. (Yes, Mr. "Pink Flamingos" himself). Having either a weaker stomach or more sense than us, she cut out after a few of Rickey's friends joined in on abusing her, in response to a very friendly greeting from her, and an innocuous request. This is really the whole point. These are not generally reasonable people who occasionally have gone off on somebody because they felt passionately about something. The regulars on ePlaya are the sort of people who act obnoxiously, because they enjoy being obnoxious. They will look for excuses to pick fights, and when they can't find them, they manufacture them. Who needs this garbage? Time to move on.

"Never make a decision without sleeping on it". Sound advice, traditionally given in a variety of cultures, if not always phrased that way. Eight months later, we have certainly slept on this decision : approximately 240 times, to be a litte more precise. We are not going back to Burning Man, not even as individuals. Local burns, we'll give some thought to. But we're turning our backs on Black Rock City. We'll probably skip the local burns, too.

Our thought, as late as last fall, was that we'd just let these people cool down and come to their senses. Another eight months have passed and, if anything, they're more fanatical about this than they were before. One of them even followed me into a completely unrelated religious discussion forum to continue the fight on e-Playa, long after it was over. This behavior was far from atypical of what we have seen out of burners since, and while some seem unclear on the concept, this is a religious organization, albeit a very open-minded one. We can not have behavior like this going on at our events.

Besides which, to make a death threat in response to a refusal to show "Pink Flamingos" is just plain psychotic. To this day, there has been no criticism of this action on the part of the Burning Man community, and more than a little validation. There was even a repeat occurence after Mr. Graham's attempt to out me as a Pagan by guessing what my real name was, with somebody calling for the person (who was accused of being me) to be left bound and gagged in the middle of the desert, where, of course, he would soon die of dehydration. What does that tell you about what we can expect from these people? "How do you know they weren't joking, Antistoicus?", some might ask. My response : the very attempt to seem psychotic is, in and of itself, psychotic, and these people have not exactly been earning a reputation for psychological stability.

We will not be returning, to be quite blunt, out of some concern for our own personal safety, and because subsequent online behavior on the part of the followers of these alleged "anarchists" has told us what we could, at best, expect from these people. We would be followed around by people who would be making trouble for us wherever we went, out of a desperate and frankly pathetic need to fit in. Having gained face recognition (note Jim Graham's attempted outing of our membership), we could then expect to be followed in real life. These people don't seem to have anything better to do with their time. But we do, and as this is a recreational event, if we're not having fun any more, what's the point?

Shrine members are free to return, if they wish. Given the semi-anarchic nature of our group, how could we stop them? But understand that when we say that we will not return, we mean it. Normally, when a Shrine member gets in trouble, we like to do what we can to help. That's what friends do. But understand that if you get in trouble in Black Rock City, you're on your own. Yes, this is a traveller's advisory, and so far, the only one we've ever had to issue.

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(1) Quite remarkable, really, because if you check the board for posts written by Antistoicus (me), you'll find that they end soon after the single flame you saw by me, earlier. Where was this flood of flammage by me, Rita? In fact, somebody immediately asked her just that, and got no more of a reply than a self-righteous (and content-free) sigh on the part of one of the regulars.