Every year, the question returns: Has Burning Man lost its edge? First tech billionaires turned the desert oasis into their playground. Then the festival’s younger crowd began to thin. Burning Man has been deemed uncool by Gen Z: In 2025, 10% of surveyed attendees were in their 20s, down from more than 30% in 2015.
I rode the elevator down into a sprawling AI rainforest, where digital images of green and gold, vaguely resembling trees, flickered on each wall, while the floor and ceiling featured an ever-evolving, root-like web of blue that lit up in response to my footsteps. The sounds of an orchestra could be heard, punctuated by the
