Early today Danger Ranger addressed the greater Burning Man community concerning the controversial issue of turnkey camps at the 2014 Burn. His post on Facebook generated a lot of positive response from burners with about 350 likes and over 100 shares. Many burners felt that their concerns had finally been addressed in a straight forward and truthful way. The majority of the comments thanked Danger Ranger for his honesty and candor. One facebooker commented, “Honesty, integrity, and one heck of a communicator. Thank you for this message and the much larger context you helped create.” Danger Ranger also called out some key people who are responsible for negatively impacting this year’s Burn and beyond.
One of the most notable offenders is Johnny Moonshine, the man behind Gypsy Flower Power. The Burning Man blog posted about the 2014 Gypsy Flower Power camp back in September during Restoration. The camp left a 4-foot trash pile for Resto to clean up, earning them the title of Moopiest Camp Ever. They abandoned tons of trash including “a broken shade structure; a rolled-up tent; a dirty mattress; burn barrels full of ash; lumber; big oil and greywater stains; jugs of mystery fluids; and an array of smaller items.” You may remember seeing photos of the trash being shared around the internet on various social media sites.
Danger Ranger’s facebook post also called out Steve Outtrim, the person who runs Burners.me. Burners.me produces quite a few stories that attack the Burning Man non-profit directly often insinuating that these posts represent the voice of the Burning Man community and the “average burner”. In his post, Danger Ranger stated that Steve Outtrim is actually an extremely affluent individual who is worth millions of dollars which seems to conflict with his work on Burners.me. This caused quite a stir and Steve Outtrim responded directly in the comments. Here is a portion of his reaction:
“Complete lies. Yes I have been successful in tech, founded some companies and took a couple of them public. So what? I don’t own a plane and have never flown to Burning Man in one. I rent a house in Marin, I don’t own any homes anywhere. Here’s a photo of my RV, which I have driven to Burning Man myself since I bought it cheap on eBay in 2011. I did employ Otis as a *guest writer* at Burners.Me, he wrote about 100 posts, but he was sacked a year ago. I have never used any sock puppet accounts, never asked anyone to troll anywhere, and certainly never hired “professional trolls” – whatever they are. I have plenty of evidence of Burning Man employees and friends of the founders trolling Burners.Me though. I provide links and references to all the claims we make: usually, it’s quotes members of BMOrg have made to the media. Please remove my corporate identity “Steve Outtrim” and all this totally false information from your rant. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, indeed.”
Unfortunately, this dialogue which most burners have been badly craving has been prematurely terminated. Danger Ranger’s FB profile has been deleted by Facebook. The reason for the sudden deletion is unknown however it is possible that Danger Ranger was removed for using a fake name. An issue which has been effecting many creative types who do not wish to use their legal name on Facebook. However, there is a very lengthy post and comment thread in the Burning Man group page on Facebook. Throughout this back and forth each party has used the phrasing “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” BARmag would like you to know that everything in this post is truthful to the best of our knowledge. Make your own conclusions, we know you’ve certainly got the brains to do so, you do make an entire city in the desert every year.
UPDATE: We have removed the image of Steve Outtrim at his request.
It’s far more likely that DR’s Facebook profile was deleted because he doxed the owner of Burners.me, in violation of FB’s TOS.
He did not “Doxx” the owner of Burners.me. He used his real name. That’s it. More likely it was that the burners.me guy reported ToS violation to Facebook for having a profile with a fake name.