What with 45,000 participants (at around $250 a pop), arson [1], a suicide [2] and former partners suing each other [3] over Black Rock City, LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) [4], it appears as if Burning Man [5] has jumped the shark [6] (then again, I thought the whole gig was up when Wired Magazine [7] made Burning Man the cover story [8] back in 1996).
I just received the following comment from resilient [9]:
Yup! [1998 and 1999] are the two years I went. On the last year I went I heard about people taking their business partners to the event for networking purposes and that's when I knew the glory days were totally over.
[1] http://laughingsquid.com/burning-man-set-on-fire-early-arson-is-to-blame/
[2] http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=3&entry_id=19890
[3] http://laughingsquid.com/john-law-sues-his-former-burning-man-partners/
[4] http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=40.769134,-119.221315&spn=0.023986,0.045662&t=h&z=15&om=1
[5] http://www.burningman.com/
[6] http://www.jumptheshark.com/
[7] http://www.wired.com/wired/
[8] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.11/burningman.html