All of this would be sheer countercultural nonsense, except for one perverse fact: The counterculture has now become the culture.

This accounts for the fact that Burning Man now seems tired and played out, less transgressive than wearied. The age of Burning Man attendees has increased over the past decade (average age in 2013 was 32, compared to 37 just nine years later); so has the average income (in 2006, 14% of Burners listed their personal income at above $100,000, compared to 27.4% by 2016).

Influencers now show up at Burning Man to sell Popeye’s Spicy Chicken; Elon Musk, Paris Hilton, and Mark Zuckerberg have shown up.

And herein lies the problem for the broader American culture.

[It was ever thus, no? Ever since the modern era began, arguably after WWI, each generation defined itself as a “counter” to what preceded it. That was true of the Roaring 20s and the real beginning of the sexual revolution, although the Great Depression and WWII eclipsed that impulse in the next two decades. In the 1950s, it began again and got defined again in pop culture through films like “Rebel Without a Cause” and “The Wild One,” and “beat” writers like Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg. The Sixties rebelled against the Fifties, the Seventies sought a break from the turbulence of the Sixties, the Eighties got serious about getting back to business, the Nineties were grungy burnouts who wanted to drop out, etc. This stuff gets passé quickly. — Ed]