The name of the event where I got to encounter the self-righteously dishonest papparozzi I mentioned earlier was Burning Corn, which was held in Ohio. The night before I left, I found out that the event had a mailing list. I was too busy with preparations for work (and for the trip) to look through it that night. After returning, though, I was curious about this list, having generally had a good, if not terribly exciting time at the event. I signed up.

Everything started out fairly innocuously, with me thanking my hosts for their hospitality. Initial (mild) euphoria sooned turned to dismay, however, when I read a post by Mr. Lewis about the videotaping, which, as I've mentioned, I didn't know about and didn't consent to. (To be more fair to the organizers than they've been to us, I should mention that Mr. Lewis has since acknowledged that he didn't actually witness the videotaping himself, he only heard about it secondhand. However, as they have acknowledged that it did go on, this seems a minor issue. To be sure, it does undermine his credibility when he talks about his perceptions of what was going on. However, I can report firsthand that the crowd was every bit as subdued as Paul reports, and it became so about the time I later heard that taping had begun, so even if his testimony seems questionable, his theorizing seems to be right on target).

Looking back over the archives of this list which I had just joined didn't put matters in a better light. "Sawmi Sensei" had written in to ask if videotaping the event would be OK. "Cult Goddess", in her response, became the very person to first bring up the rule that one ask people if they mind being videotaped; ie. that one not tape them without their consent. Gary Xaoui seconded that, and the list moderator followed up, giving the nice concise directive "ask questions first, shoot later". There isn't much ambiguity to be found in any of this. The right of the person being taped (or photographed) to not be photographed (if he doesn't wish to be) has been acknowledged. How, then, are we to explain their reactions after I expressed my dismay over the violation of the very rules that they had just layed down? Rules which, as I've pointed out, are standard operating procedure, established ettiquette, and just plain common courtesy? By noting how little value was placed on the truth.

Phil had replied with an absolute whopper: he claimed that he had given everybody he photographed the opportunity to have any photos he took of them erased on the spot, if they wished. As you've already seen me mention, this was a bald faced lie. So, Phil has violated the rules of the event, and the rights of its participants at this point, and then lied to cover his tracks. How would you expect the event organizers to respond - you know, the very people who set up those rules in the first place?

"Cult Goddess", the very woman who had first mentioned the rule, following her cheerful dismissal of Paul's concerns, responded to me with a snide personal attack, in which she complained about my "narrowminded views", that narrowmindedness consisting of my objection to being set up to be videotaped without my knowledge or consent. Gary Xaoui, acting as if he had developed amnesia, acted as if the "ask questions first, then shoot later" rule had never been brought up, and seriously tried to argue that the violation of one's privacy was a non-issue, because we lived in a media age, and the cameras were everywhere! Continuing this line of argument, Gary would go so far as to make the bizarre claim that cameras had been placed in the toilet in his hotel room. My impression that drugs were playing a role in the thought processes here were confirmed, not only by the jumbled writing, but by the disjoined logic, as Gary seriously tried to argue that shooting people without their knowledge and without their consent was OK, because the organizers had already layed down a rule to ask questions first, then shoot later. In other words, violating the privacy of the participants is acceptable, because the organizers have announced that there are rules against doing so? Uh, huh.

Dismissing the issue of privacy out of hand, Gary had written :

" I was busy blowing fire and missed some of the best burn stuff, I am glad to know that it was documented. This is a age of media, people and recording equipment are everywhere. Events like this are never private, ... "

A small cleared area in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of Ohio isn't a private location? But, if this is how Gary was thinking, then why did he and his people announce that rule? He added :

" Try living you life to the fullest all the time. if there are things you do not want others to Hear, do not say them, do not want others to read you most privet thoughts? Do not write them down, same with how you act. "

Good God. As I implied in my rebuttal to Gary's remarks, this was beginning to sound like something straight out of Orwell. The absurd thing was, that he would have us do this to ourselves, in the name of freedom! What followed for a while was standard online silliness; you see some of the hate linked to, below. No, I'm not going to sort it all out, I'm getting tired of this. However, suffice it so say that I told off the hypocritical Cult Goddess in far gentler terms than she deserved, got to "enjoy" somebody's creative attempts at slander as he backed up an attempt at argument through character assassination with an utter fabrication about what went on at the even, and, continuing to remain as calm as the irritating circumstances allowed, explained matters in terms so simple, that even the unprincipled drugged-out half-wits that I was wasting my time trying to reason with could understand, without coming out and putting it that way, though God knows I was tempted. Oddly enough, I wasn't able to do this in a sound bite, a fact that a few of the trolls on the list then had the nerve to complain about.

Phil, who I've really come to loath, while he admitted that he was wrong, asserted that he did nothing wrong by going on the attack. In other words, once he was pinned to the mat, logically speaking, he'd admit that he shouldn't have done what he did, he still maintained that he had a right to extract a political price from me for bringing the issue up. What a sleaze. He actually claimed to be victimized by my decision to say that he was lying, for no better reason than the fact that he was, well, lying. I pointed out the unreasonability of this, tried to make peace with somebody who didn't deserve it, and never heard back from the creep. I did, however, get to hear him whine online about how victimized he was by everything that had gone on, him being held responsible for his own actions and all, going on to leave the mistaken impression that I was about to take him to court. Pointing out that I had never said or done anything of the sort made no impression, as the regulars were far too busy making their own reality, to listen to anything as prosaic as the facts, while Phil was too busy seeking revenge for not getting his way.

I was still giving these people too much credit. At the time, I really did believe what I had said in my response to Phil, about his frame of mind. I really did believe that he wanted to do the right thing, and was just feeling trapped by his perceived need to save face. Looking back, I wonder what I was thinking about. This attempt to be conciliatory was reacted to elsewhere, as if it were an admission of "guilt" on my part - guilty of what, was never said. Taking Phil's acknowledgment of wrongdoing at face value, and viewing his disclaimers as being a sign of nothing more than embarassment, I viewed the flamewar as being over. Some had other ideas.

BobbyG from the bm-chicago list, never tiring of the opportunity to do a little backbiting, jumped in to revive the flamewar, once it had appeared to die down; never tiring of sucking up to the list regulars, he would assert the exact opposite position over on the Diox list, following the lead of Sister Dana, within about a day or two, acting in such a way as to leave the reader with the impression that such had been his long-held and heartfelt views on the subject. Considering how personal he had gotten with me, for asserting something much milder, one might naively think that an apology from Mr.G would be on its way, but none was ever heard. Quite the contrary, he'd be up to more of the same over on Diox, soon enough.

Back here on Burningcorn, I was amused to see his sage commentary on what had historically been going on at Burning Man, as he had told some of us, in person, that 2001 was his virgin year! Why he would lie about that, I wouldn't care to guess). Refusing to be trolled any further, I wrote a short letter telling this career troll to behave himself, only to find myself confronted with another nimrod, who tried to resuscitate the old discredited arguments from Phil's camp in the form of would-be satire, going on to complain about what a mean person I was being, when I told him to cut it out.

All in all, what a pleasure this had been.

Some of the links immediately below might occasionally come up dead. We'll get to that, and don't worry, I have backup material just in case.

Considering the amount of grief I had been given over this, both on the Burningcorn list and elsewhere, sometimes even by members of BMORG itself, some of whom referred to me as "the infamous Joseph Dunphy" in part because of the argument you've just seen, my astonishment at a post which I saw on e-Playa recently would seem understandable. In the thread "Burning Man files suit against Voyeur Video", in the Burningman 2002 General Discussion section, Andie Kopp wrote about BMORG's motivations for taking action against Voyeur Video which, like Phil, had been videotaping people without their knowledge or consent:

actiongrl - Sunday, 07/07/02, 12:02:18pm
(#39 of 48)
And when we jam...we don't need no ham.

While the fact that the subjects of the Voyeur tapes are nude makes their failure to obtain permission really slimy, and thereby more emotionally charged, the truth of the matter is that the case is about our community's right to establish standards for permission to film at the event and distribute it. If someone were exploiting footage of your art, your theme camp, your great costume, etc., without permission, we'd be in the same position to undertake protecting it if it ran counter to our ethos - Burning Man's right to permit videography, and the community standards of non-exploitation and asking permission before filming or shooting - in this way.