Nicole Shanahan, a former Burning Man attendee — and ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and former vice-presidential running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — declared Burning Man “demonic" on Twitter yesterday.
“I have come to believe that Burning Man is not just an eccentric festival, but rather a powerful vehicle for deception,” wrote Shanahan. “In fact, it may be one of the most effective tools for Satan to misdirect souls away from our Heavenly Father. When you surrender yourself to ‘the playa,’ you do not simply embrace freedom; you also open yourself to profound distortions of what is good.”
Shanahan’s outburst reflects an emerging trend: Silicon Valley billionaires publicly discussing the devil. On September 15, PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel will begin a secretive four-part lecture series about “The Antichrist” in San Francisco. The Nerd Reich newsletter will provide Special Coverage of this historic event.
Shanahan says she attended the festival as a guest of the elite “First Camp”—among the most important camps in the Burner hierarchy, the organizational center of the festival—for several years. This makes her criticism of the scene noteworthy. Shanahan’s missive brims with righteous anger and judgment against the desert art and drug party.
In her statement, Shanahan noted that she is now a born-again Christian who is “devouring” theology.
“As I devote myself to Scripture, to my family, and to walking in the light of the Lord, I find that this process of renewal continues to unfold, deepening day by day, step by step,” she wrote. “I no longer desire to ‘Burn the Man;’ I now burn with zeal in the Spirit.”
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This makes her criticism of the scene noteworthy.
As an ex-fundigelical, no it doesn’t, nor does any other drivel that comes out of a fundie’s mouth. She’s gone off the deep end and joined what is essentially a doomsday cult, and her “criticisms” of anything should be taken as the ravings of a cultist who’s lost the thread of reality.
It’s hilarious that she thinks she’s “devouring theology,” when in fact, she’s devouring propaganda disguised as religion (if she was, she’d have a very different outlook). Doesn’t make her any less dangerous as a billionaire, perhaps even moreso being a billionaire who sees demons in the mundane, but nothing of what she is saying is based on demonstrable fact.
