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Burning Man is an annual event in the western part of the United States that focuses on art, community building, and self-expression. However, this year's celebration in Black Rock City, Nevada, was halted by heavy rains on September 2, as per Reuters.
Attendees usually spend time cleaning the four-square-mile area of the desert, tending to fuel spills, picking up glow sticks, and managing burn scars. The official website of Burning Man refers to this as MOOP, which stands for Matter Out Of Place.
As per the Reno Gazette, MOOP includes tent poles, pyrotechnics, carpets, man-made dunes, abandoned art, cigarette butts, and "greywater," or contaminated water dumped in the desert. Several of these items were found scattered around the event's location and pictures of the same went viral online.
This lack of sustainable mindset infuriated the netizens, who then took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to call out the organizers and the festival for being a "capitalist hellscape."
"So. Much. Plastic." - Netizens react as images from Burning Man featuring heaps of waste, debris, and more go viral online
As per the official website of Burning Man, Larry Harvey, the co-founder of the event, wrote the 10 principles of the festival in 2004, as instructions for the newly formed Regional Network. These include inclusion, gifting, participation, self-reliance, decommodification, civic responsibility, immediacy, self-expression, and communal effort. These principles are meant to represent the community's ethos and culture and were announced soon after the event came into being.
Another important principle is leaving no trace, and the organizers encourage attendees to clean up after themselves at the event. They emphasize, "Burners are environmentalists."
Hence, at Burning Man, visitors are supposed to build a transient, self-sustaining society that leaves no trace or waste when it is over. However, images from the recent edition of the event left netizens in shock. They were stunned to see the difference between the principles that the event emphasizes and the reality of the matter.
This situation gave rise to the word MOOP, which stands for "Matter Out of Place" and refers to waste, debris, and any extraneous material found in the Black Rock Desert.
Netizens took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to call out the authorities after several images of waste lying around at the location came to light. Individuals accused the festival of not being as sustainable as it claimed to be and pointed out that the venue was full of food wrappers, water bottles, sunscreen bottles, and other items made of plastic.
More about Burning Man
Burning Man is an annual week-long large-scale desert campout in Nevada, USA, concentrating on art, community development, self-expression, and self-reliance. The event is conducted the weekend before Labour Day in Black Rock City, Nevada, and ends with the symbolic burning of a 40-foot wooden effigy known as the Man.
The festival was scheduled to be held from August 27 to September 4, 2023. However, it came to a halt on September 2. The event is recognized for its displays of art and expression. It includes fantastical, arty vehicles, towering metallic sculptures, and much more.
