ABSTRACT
The cancellation of Burning Man in 2020 and 2021 threw ideas of commodification into a tailspin. No tickets to sell, no trash fence to separate the inside from the outside, nothing to covet beyond perhaps the ability for some participants to take a rogue trip out to the high desert while others stayed behind. Those who threw caution to the wind and headed to the desert anyway became a target for a shedload of on-line hate. It became clear how much the pandemic was changing us. Ironically, there were no reports of infections linked to the 2020 Rogue burn; it was the next, officially sanctioned burn in 2022 where COVID spread like wildfire. This chapter, however, is not about the pandemic, the 2020 Rogue Burn or the 2021 Renegade Burn. These events are so drastically and directly rooted in opposition toward a specific other that I might as well call the other the enemy, and decommodification is most effective when it is not so reactionary. While its process may begin by squaring up to an enemy, the battle will fire up and fizzle out quickly if it remains in the realm of us-against-them. The more creative, affectionate, playful disruptions are the ones that help us to change even when we don't think we should or are ready to do so.
