Dept. of Public Works No. 01

Find your Burner world.

// Transmission

A privacy-first map for finding Burners, camps, and regional crews near you — long after the trash fence comes down. Fuzzy location, opt-in only, and none of your business handed to anyone else.

Wander into the beta Playa.Earth beta — a live regional pilot
Privacy Promise Read This First

Discovery, not surveillance.

We built this backwards from most apps: privacy first, features second. Nothing below is a settings toggle you have to go hunt for — it's just how the thing works, out of the box.

01

Fuzzy on purpose

City-level, roughly ±5km — enough to say "nearby," not enough to say "there." Your exact coordinates never touch our servers. We couldn't hand them over if we wanted to.

02

Opt-in, always

Nobody sees you until you decide to be seen. No default broadcasting, no "public unless you dig through settings." Silence is the starting state.

03

Private until you say otherwise

Every new profile starts invisible. Becoming findable is something you reach for, not something that happens to you.

04

We don't sell your dust

No scraping, no export, no public API for profile data, no selling anything to anybody — ever. We're not building a data business. We're building a map.

05

Delete means gone

Hit delete and you actually disappear — live data and backups, on a real clock. Not "deactivated." Not lurking in some snapshot. Gone.

06

18+. No exceptions

This is a grown-folks space. Accounts for minors are excluded and enforced at signup — some things aren't for the kids' table.

Your people don't disappear when the trash fence comes down.

The problem

Right now, finding your people is a scavenger hunt. Regional directories go stale the second the season ends. On-playa friend-finder apps vanish the moment the gate closes. Event guides list camps like org charts — never the actual humans inside them.

There's no year-round, opt-in, actually-private way to find nearby Burners, camps, and projects once the dust settles.

The fix

A living map and directory that doesn't go to sleep in October. Opt-in, deliberately fuzzy, built for finding your people — not for watching them.

Discovery, not surveillance. Connection, not another feed to doomscroll. Twelve months a year, not just burn week.

Built for every flavor of Burner.

Newcomer

First Burn

Find a home camp and a local regional crew before you've even bought your ticket.

Camp Lead

Organizer

Round up members, coordinate builds, and find regional talent without waiting for next August.

Regional

Community Member

Stay plugged in locally, all year — not just at the one reunion potluck.

Artist

Project Owner

Find collaborators, spare hands, and weird skills for whatever you're building.

Traveler

Host / Guest

Offer a ride, find a couch, pass through somewhere new without starting from zero.

Lurker

Browse Privately

Stay invisible and just look around — confirm the community's real before you ever show up on the map yourself.

Trust is the product.

Visibility is always your call, and when the system isn't sure, it guesses toward less exposure — never more. No dark patterns nudging you to overshare.

01

Verification

Vouched for by a camp or a regional org contact — a real human signal, not just an email address nobody checked.

02

Two clear states

Private (browse-only, invisible) or Searchable (findable at coarse resolution). That's it — no confusing ladder of settings, plus a verified badge so you know who's legit.

03

Fails safe

Everyone starts Private. Nothing widens your exposure on its own — going Searchable is something you choose, not something that sneaks up on you.

Live Now

The beta's up and running.

The beta is out in the wild right now, as a real regional pilot — an actual working map and directory, not a rendering. Come poke around, see what year-round Burner community looks like, and help us figure out where this goes next.

Wander into the beta Opens the Playa.Earth beta in a new tab

Free forever. No ads. No paywalls.

Playa.Earth runs on donations, not a business model. Money keeps the lights on for the project — it never buys anyone a leg up, a badge, or a bigger dot on the map. Every feature, free, for everyone, always.

No Ads No Paywalls No Pay-For-Visibility
Chip in, keep it free ►