From our correspondent in the United States,
After the flood, the exodus. About 72,000 people trapped in mud at the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert were able to make their way home Monday evening after dry roads reopened. Torrential rains transformed this essential American counterculture haunt, particularly popular with Silicon Valley millionaires, into a post-apocalyptic ordeal worthy of Mad Max. And the death of a participant under circumstances that were not clarified by the authorities did not stop netizens from mocking violently.
What happened ?
Typically, festival goers are more exposed to extreme temperatures or sandstorms. But after Tropical Storm Hillary hit the California peninsula at the end of August, up to 20 mm of rain fell in northern Nevada. Enough to turn the Black Rock Desert and the “Playa” – Burning Man’s vast promenade – built 15,000 years ago on the basin of a lake, into a gigantic swamp.
The impassable roads were closed to traffic, leaving festival-goers stranded on the site. Fearing more rain on Saturday, organizers urged participants to “conserve water, food and fuel and find warm and safe shelter.”
Some preferred to walk through the mud to escape this hell and reach the only passable road. DJ Diplo posted a video of actor Chris Rock sitting in the back of a pickup truck after being rescued by “a fan.” “It was an incredibly strenuous 10-kilometer hike completed at midnight through heavy, slippery mud, but I managed to get out safely,” Neal, a former Obama administration lawyer, said on X (ex-Twitter) .
What do we know about the deceased person?
A festival-goer died Saturday and the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office opened an investigation. Authorities did not provide details and only said Monday that the death did not appear to be weather-related. A participant mentioned a death due to electrocution from a generator installed in the mud, but police have not confirmed this.
Why have internet users gone wild?
Burning Man began as a bonfire in San Francisco in 1986 to mark the summer solstice. In the early 1990s, the gathering was held in late August in the Black Rock Desert, two hours north of Reno and Lake Tahoe, and celebrated music and visual arts with huge sculptures and extravagant costumes. The highlight of each issue is a pyre on which a twenty-meter-high wooden mannequin, “the man,” is burned. All in a kind of hippie utopia halfway between a traveling commune that thrives on barter and barter and an ayahuasca/champi/LSD-style spiritual retreat. And then come the millionaires from Silicon Valley.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin become regular guests, as do Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Startups spend tens of thousands of dollars flying in by helicopter or hiring private chefs in luxury RVs. Air-conditioned yurts are being created and with them influencers.
Fatefully, this year’s “mud apocalypse” was celebrated by netizens five years after rejoicing over the Fyre Fest fiasco. The images of the clip of Shakira in the mud are circulating on a loop on the networks, just like the Balenciega fashion show of 2022.
The influential Instagram account Saint Hoax has compiled the best memes, like “Wait, Mom watches rich people drown and get Ebola at Burning Man,” “Burning Man is where rich people go to live like poor people? ” » But here’s the best of the “Funny Because It’s True” category: “Being stuck at Burning Man is almost as terrible as being stuck in a conversation with someone who’s been to Burning Man before.” »