Burning Man banned an infamous $100,000-a-ticket camp favored by influencers after backlash from fellow attendees

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Burning Man, an annual nine-day arts and culture festival in the Nevada desert, kicked off this past weekend.
Among its 80,000 attendees, Silicon Valley elites and high-rollers are known to pay thousands of dollars for chef-prepared food, pricey campers, and luxury accommodations.
One such campsite, called Humano the Tribe, was banned in February from attending this year’s Burning Man for violating the festival’s "leave no trace" rules and Fyre Festival-like conditions.
Humano the Tribe offered accommodations going up to $100,000, and fellow Burning Man attendees complained the camp’s port-a-potties burst into flames last year.
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A luxury camp attracting high-rolling influencers and featuring $100,000 campers won’t be one of the thousands of attractions at this year’s Burning Man festival in the desert.

Burning Man, the nine-day arts and cultural festival taking place in the Nevada desert, kicked off this weekend. The miles-wide desert city is expected to draw up to 80,000 attendees for its many art installations, musical performances, and general mayhem. Despite organizers touting principles for the event that include radical inclusion and decommodification (there’s no money exchanged on grounds), Burning Man has attracted Silicon Valley elites and influencers ready for a luxury experience.

But one such campsite, called Humano the Tribe, won’t be at Burning Man this year. Burning Man organizers banned the camp in February after reports it had not adhered to the festival’s rules and was disrupting the experiences of fellow attendees. In 2018, Humano the Tribe offered luxury tents and campers ranging from $25,000 to $100,000, Mashable reported. The camp also reportedly offered food made from "raw and organic ingredients" by private chefs.

Meanwhile, the costs of tickets for this year’s Burning Man range from $210 for low-income attendees to $1,400 for pre-sale admission.

But on top of Humano the Tribe’s luxury offerings shunned by regular festivalgoers, the campsite ran into some other major problems that have led some to draw comparisons to the failed Fyre Festival. According to supposed festivalgoers on Reddit, the biggest issue was with the group’s private toilets. The toilets weren’t installed with proper plumbing and leaked black water contaminated with fecal waste, Mashable reported. One Reddit user said they saw the Humano toilets "go up in flames" at the festival.

In its blog post announcing Humano was banned, Burning Man organizers wrote that Humano was a "strain on resources" and had a poor record of adhering to the festival’s "leave no trace" policy of cleaning up and leaving the desert in a better state than it was found.

Burning Man organizers also made mention of Humano as one of the many "turnkey" and "plug and play" camps favored by "sparkle ponies," a term for the models and Instagram influencers who use Burning Man as a place for photo ops while dressed in elaborate costumes. Burning Man is also known to attract Silicon Valley elite, whose most powerful members have taken up a luxury stretch of the festival dubbed "K Street Black Rock."

Tech executives including Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have all previously been spotted at Burning Man.

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Source: Business Insider – pleskin@businessinsider.com (Paige Leskin)