Burning Man’s radical values were co-opted into justifications for precarious labor
Evidence
And while in some ways Burning Man is a radical space, it is also primarily inhabited by the wealthy, white people who run the technology industry: further, the values of Burning Man have been transformed by the technical enterprise into business practices that justify unstable labor models and valorize neoliberalism. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 140
Categorization
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: who exactly are the ‘wealthy, white people’ — is there demographic data on Burning Man attendees, and has co-optation intensified since this book?
- STORYSTEM: A novel could trace a single Burner across two decades, watching the same rhetoric of radical self-expression go from communal gift-exchange to justifying a gig-economy startup.
- XREF: connects to: Burning Man models the ideals and labor structures of tech culture — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 139; Workers internalize capitalist values and accept precarity as deserved — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 63
Broader Connections
- Burning Man models the ideals and labor structures of tech culture
#corroborates(0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 139 - Workers internalize capitalist values and accept precarity as deserved
#expands(0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 63