Man, I can't even begin to help you. My kneejerk reaction is to point to your attitude and say no wonder you're no prize but that would be simplistic. I mean, I don't want to know you after reading that but perhaps you're just having a bad patch and if so it'd be wrong to condemn on that basis but really...your attitude is juvenile to say the least.

I know what, if you can't meet enough people to make you happy, if something about you turns people off so badly, maybe this isn't your thing. If it's everybody else's problem, same deal. This isn't your thing. Do something else then. QED.

Sas

Well, first of all, the burner "community" is a misnomer. It's a collection of communities with an overall fringe theme.

If you were to walk into a biker bar wearing a tu-tu, fake feet, and a fright wig, how do you imagine you would be welcomed? It's the same thing with the burner subsets and the community as a whole. First off, I bet people can tell that your veins don't run dry with playa dust. Not usually a big problem, but many sub-groups only associate with people who've shared the playa experience. You don't go to a Phish concert if you don't like the music, why would you assume anything different from people who torture themselves for a week in one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet. Heck, people who DO go to the event but spend most of it in an RV often find themselves shunned by the mainstream community.

Next, yes, you have to find a group with a similar interest. Some folks focus around parties or drugs and look at all outsiders as potential DEA agents. 40% of the time, they're probably right. Some are exhibitionists, they get a lot of purvy voyeurs and photographers. Some are about drinking and blowing stuff up; a button down oxford will exclude you from their ranks. The list goes on and on. Find a group you DO connect with, don't just stumble in like Erkle, wave hello and expect to be consumed by the group (unless you find a vampire group, they'll actually consume you....).

Hey sasuatch Im soory about how I came off but to dissapoint you I'm actually a real nice guy who really doesnt fit in normal society either and my deal is all frustration. SHY? I'm shy. It was so hard for me to be extraverted and seek out people I didnt know and try to hang out with them. Dont get me wrong most of the kids were really nice and I received more hugs from these folks than I have anywhere and a few of them showed me poi moves and let me try other flow toys and it was nice. I met with this group once a week for 2 months to spin and then go out for pizza and drinks. Im horrible with names and made a point to remember everyones name (like 30 people) in a short amount of time and was as nice as could be and was happy to have people to spin with. But Im not in the loop. No one was really interested in who I was or where Im from and I was not able to get into the fold and be kept in the loop and it just sucks because of the effort. The whole while I could tell that a couple of the guys just did not like me and gave me dirty looks whenever they were around and did not make me feel welcome or comfortable. the last straw was when phish came, when asking people if anyone was going I got all this negative bullshit. I mean just say no! I dont need a lecture on how phish sucks and hippis suck and all this shit! I cant really stand most house music but I didnt tell people Oh the music u guys listen to sucks. Thats rude and I can get that from any asshole on the street and dont need to buy a ticket to be ridiculed. Any way you sound like the type I would not want to hang out with anyway so why would I bother. Like I said some folks greated me with open arms but most did not. Thanx for coming to my defense Arell. May peace be with you all no matter how you feel about me.

I gotta believe we were all shy at one time or another in our life - and a lot of us still are, we just figured out how to schmooz.
I don't think that the problem has as much to do with being shy as it has to do with how we come across - our "personality".
Heck, some people are flattered by meeting someone who's shy - it makes them feel more confident about themselves. In fact most shy people come across as humble and it's easy to feel comfprtable around someone who's humble.
The truth may well be that we prefer to associate with people that come across the way we do ourselves. It's a comfort zone.
The test in life is to be able to step out of that zone when the need arises. It's called tolerance and as much as I strive to do just that, I have found myself ignoring someone or not being as open and friendly as I could have only because they didn't fit in my little world at the moment.
It's easy to make friends with the ones we like, it's harder to do it when it really counts.
Here's an excerpt from the story on my artwork I had at Burning Man this year. It's from the final chapter and has to do with how we all see something different in one person's face just as each person sees something different in a particular piece of art.

B-bop, the problem isn't yours, it's ours. And if you are a true Burner, you are happy in the knowledge that there is always a place for you, no matter how small or large it is. There's plenty of people out there like you and me and all the rest of us bozos on here.

From "The TMA-3 Story"...

For some the draw is the night time spectacle of larger-than-life artwork spewing jets of flame hundreds of feet into the air, or the thunderous roll of music amplified across the desert playa 24/7 that, after being in Black Rock City for 24 hours, sounds like the rhythmic, non-stop droll of a locomotive traveling endlessly across the desert lakebed.

For some it is the freedom to express yourself, or even the freedom to meditate in your own universe. And of course for most of us it is the world’s biggest party. But for all of us it is most certainly the love, the respect, and the tolerance we show for each other, regardless of whom we are and what our dreams may be or what it even is we come to Burning Man for."

See you at SD Decomm '09.

Chip
www.burningmanzeroseven.com

I throw in on this as it's crossed my mind more than once lately.

to a certain extent, what every one sez is true. there is no single community "the burners" there are quite a few, usually centered around a particular activity or desire, but not always. it can center on location, sex, age, art choices, cooking choices or just about any other concept you care to have. Those various groups have overlap of varying degrees till they look like a giant soap bubbled venn diagram. There is a great deal to be said for finding your place and your connections, I can't tell you what they may be or how long it will take you to mesh with each of those bubbles.

one suggestion I would have is that if you have particular interest, lead the way to that interest. if you love phish start a phish camp, if you love jam bands, search out people who like to jam on their instruments and build a nucleous around it. but make it your own and then cross pollinate with other around.

Now to something that might be new to the conversation. this isn't something that really has a bad or good attached to it, merely something to corresponds to human behavior and the appearance of clique-ishness among burners. Dunbar's number is the conceptual number of relationships a person can maintain with stability. it is an inexact number that varies per person but generally considered around 150 (or the follow on studies that put that number around 300 for non-survival bases populations).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

why does that apply? well as a new person just introducing yourself, you run into exactly what you have seen. I know I have been one of the people you have attempted to connect with more, but you have just run up against the fact that I already have enough people I consider myself close to. that creates a tension in that in order to devote time to increasing our connection, I have to remove time from maintaining my other friendships. yes that could be a false diacotomy but it's a very real emotion for me. between the two, and without any judgment on you, my current friends are going to get the time and energy. oddly enough it is in direct contrast to who I was and what I was like when I first started hanging around with burners. I was inquisitive and curious about damn near everyone I met, partly because I was searching out friendships and common interests. there are groups I gravitated towards because of common interest and eventually I became really good friends with a lot of amazing people. a big old bell curve of the distribution on how long ti took to make friends would fit in here very well. a very few were build in minutes a few were built over years, most feel somewhere between.
however I know at this point in my life, I have no doubt I come off as pleasant but standoffish to new people. it's not that I feel the new person is bad, or a LEO, or negative in anyway. I just feel a sense of guilt when I can't be there for people I deeply care about, and removing more from them makes me feel even guiltier.
and lastly I suspect I am not the only one at or above their dunbar's number in the local communities. I suspect in fact that a lot of people are in one way or another affected by that around here, for bad or good.

I hope that makes sense even if ti's not quite what you would hope for.

Taz

:( I'm sorry it was like that. I went to SD decom for the first time and had a blast and everyone was super friendly to me, of course I knew alot of them from hooping/faire but alot of people i'd never met before were just so nice and took me in and helped me out. But I'm a super outgoing and friendly person and just will go up to people and start talking to them, and I tend to be pretty well accepted everywhere I go, so maybe I just had an expectation that if I am generally well tolerated normally then I would be fully accepted into this community and its a manifestation of my beliefs? I am sorry that that happened though but dont judge everyone as others are saying there are alot of different people that go to these events and try talking to more people if you didnt get along with the ones you did talk to.

Yeah, I understand. The DeCom was the first event I've been to as well, except for a few parties at the warehouse. There's such a thing as "too high expectations." The thread here says it all from a few different angles, but I'd like to give you my view of the first event.

I'm an older guy and have been closeted because of my relatively high-profie work in the aerospace industry (freshly retired now). One dresses the part in industry - a costume - that doesn't reveal much about the person. At Dreamland Station my costume - I was one of those that folks tagged as a narc or "Homeland Security" pogue - was pretty conventional clothing. There was a definite chill from the old hands, so I wasn't expecting too much and decided to enjoy what I could without expecting each and every posse to drag me from the wash into their tents to share with me their varied delights. So I pulled out a perfect desert book (Ezra Pound) and pulled a chair under an empty canopy and read and watched the world go by.

Every once in awhile someone who knew me dropped in and we talked or had a beer or gossiped some. One friend through photography dragged me to Sparky's Bar with intentions of "corrupting" me, while he administered flaming enemas to the willing. I dragged my own ass back to the tent while I still knew the way (pausing to provide headlights for a couple of late-coming tent-setter-uppers) and rejoined the world early the next morning. Shit, I've been corrupted since before that friend was born. But it was a good attempt.

I ran into a kid I know from downtown who was now hooked up with one of the regulars - no idea he was part of the scene. Another guy came by to ask what I was reading and that led to an eight-hour conversation about literature, movies, video games, life, love and everything. A guy I first met while photographing Sabbat drove by while I was chatting with the wife of a friend and waved. Dropping by DPW I found a guy who I'd first met as a club promoter years ago and we caught up for an hour or so.

You can't force that radical inclusion, you have to let it happen. It won't be by everyone, and won't happen quickly, but is a process. Don't judge others, but let them judge you. Friendship doesn't happen overnight, and some people are going to have criteria that you just will never meet. I'm never ever going to be the hang-out choice for any girl looking for Adonis. I may be the hang-out choice for someone wanting to talk books or photography.

There's parts of this thread I haven't read yet, so if your experience changed your mind, I'm glad. If it didn't, do it again and let things happen - they will.

-Don