Imaginary friends. Monday morning, 48 hours into a global, social media-induced fake news hysteria, thousands of Burning Man attendees began their long, dirty trip home after what now seems, by all available indication, a largely pleasant (if unusually wet) week in the desert. Many, checking into their cursed apps for the first time in a week, were surprised to discover the following: they were apparently in danger of starvation; the 70,000-person event (a notably light year), populated almost entirely by billionaire venture capitalists, had collapsed into a Titanic-level disaster in which only the most elite of elites (Diplo and Chris Rock) were permitted to exit by way of private shuttle (they hiked several miles through the mud to a road, where they hitched a ride to town); and giant, prehistoric fairy shrimp had hatched from acid mud, which was burning holes through the skin of anyone it touched, while a virus, possibly Ebola, reduced the poors (venture capital associates?) to fits of coughing blood. Men in hazmat suits arrived. The area was under quarantine. Some people were possibly eating other people? But more incredible than this incredibly fake account was the popular takeaway: thousands of people were in danger of dying, we were told, and — for an incoherent myriad of diametrically opposed political reasons — this was awesome.
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