There isn’t too much here that’s in the burner weeds, so I figured I’d post a link, given the larger applicability to creating a robust and thriving volunteer community.

It’s also a peek behind the curtain writ small, as rangering is only a subset of all the work that goes in year-round to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for participants who may be in novel and/or vulnerable situations at an event. Yes, it’s a lot of old hippies and ravers doing drugs for a few days, but it’s only possible because of tireless effort for months beforehand.

Of interest to me is that Fax Machine’s first burn was the same as mine (Flipside 2024), and he’s now the ranger lead for the next three years. In some contexts, that may seem like a glacial path, while in others, it may seem rushed. But it’s consistent with seeing a need and having or developing relevant skills to satisfy that need for the benefit of others.

I’m in no way an impartial observer, since Fax Machine is the guy who took away my first van fridge after it died to see if he could get a replacement control board and then pass it along to someone else in need. I’m housed because of the burn community. When my phone was stolen this spring, it was a burner who let me use his address and then drove out to my van after 10 p.m. to deliver it from the other end of town.

One thing he pointed out a need for was getting a binder of paperwork condensed, synthesized and digitized, which falls squarely in my bailiwick, so I’ve reached out on Discord offering my services as an editor. (Thank the old gods and the new that Facebook is being more widely recognized as a great way to get messaging out to fewer and fewer people; even in 2024, my attempts to find the community online were met with “here’s the Facebook group,” and upon saying it may as well be in a filing cabinet somewhere across the world in terms of accessibility, I was told that my decision not to throw the doors wide open to a surveillance company was a “me” problem. This is not how community is built.)

It’s about time I gave something back.

More broadly, it’s a reminder that there are people and groups around, no matter where you are (within reason, of course), looking to support each other and in need of help doing so. I don’t want to turn this into a polemic, so I’ll leave it at that.

At the end of the day, life is about human interaction, which society is doing its best to push us away from by forcing long work hours to make ends meet and encouraging parasocial engagement instead. And as much fun as it is to bitch about, simply radically agreeing about problems with colourful language does nothing to fix them.