It's sort of an EDM tulip bubble.

If you ever wanted to go to Burning Man but were put off by the complicated and crapshoot-y ticket process, this might be your year. If you were put off by the intense heat, high winds, the alkali dust that gets everywhere, the lack of running water, and the rich people in RVs with culturally appropriative feather headdresses, I can't help you. 

Nothing can help you.

There was also a time when it was just some
guy burning an effigy of the guy his girlfriend
left him for. So the origin story's a little ick.

Every year it's always something that's going to ruin Burning Man. Weather, bugs, glampers. This year it's ticketpocalypse. Oh, and also maybe a hurricane? I think it's down to a tropical storm which is, as I write this, battering Southern California on its path to northern Nevada, but one thing at a time. There was a time, in ages past, where you would just roll up to the desert with a handful of cash which you would exchange for a ticket. Actually there was a time before that when Burning Man was free, but that was way before my time.

Look out Comcast and whatever we're
supposed to call Twitter now,* Ticketmaster
is coming for the most hated company title. 

Anyway, now it routinely sells out, often in seconds. Actual seconds, leaving many would be campers to rage against the injustice of ticketing websites like so many Taylor Swift fans. But this year there's this new phenomenon of everybody trying to off-load their tickets. Facebook is awash with burners hawking their tickets. At first some people were asking for more than face value, which is frowned upon but now as the even draws ever nigh, they're hoping to get whatever they can. 

Ok, fine, some people like
the porta potties.

Which for an event dedicated to anti-commodification, is kind of a bummer. Well, an event dedicated to anti-commodification selling $575 tickets is kind of a bummer too, but if you like porta potties, that's just the way it is. Huh? Well, sure, nobody like the porta--oh, you meant the price. Yeah, five hundred seventy-five dollars. Of money. You can apply for low-income tickets, and there're something called FOMO tickets that cost between $1,500 and $2,750. 

At what point can a traffic jam considered
 a war crime? Because, I mean...

Which is ludicrous, but the idea is that more well-off burners can help subsidize the low income tickets. And this actually brings me to my theory about why this is happening this year. Well, ok, two theories. One is last year, the weather was brutal. Like, a hundred and seventeen degrees. Of temperature. And the nine-hour goat rodeo that was the line to get out. Which is whatever. Fine. Its was legitimately the worst. But my real theory is speculators. 

Somehow this all feels like the
fault of the 17th century Dutch. 

I think some folks bought tickets with the intent to resell them and while shady, in previous years this probably wouldn't have been difficult. And while I should be feeling some schadenfreude at the prospect of would-be scalers getting comeuppance, I suspect that there're plenty of burners who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to go and are now stuck with tickets they can't even give away. Thanks capitalism. Wait, can I blame capitalism for this one? 

I mean, probably, but scalping is a particularly shitty version of it. At it's best--ok, it's least exploitative and gross form, I think of capitalism as based on the idea that someone recognizes a need, or a market and then through ingenuity or inventiveness, fulfills it and is rewarded. But recognizing that some think will be scarce, buying it up, and then trying to sell it at a mark-up is, I don't know, parasitism? 

"Not sure we quite see where you're going with this..."

-day traders

*I know it's X. I'm not going to say it. It's dumb.