I love the outdoors. I love peace and quiet. I love hiking and seeing the stars outside the city. All of that is great.
I hate tent-camping. My wife and I own a little camper and we haul that thing all over the place. I don't see the problem with it.
That said something about a $2 million dollar campsite at burning man seems very wrong to me. There's a time and a place to throw money around, but Burning Man definitely isn't it. It's an established culture and a closely held idea of how the world should work. If you don't want to actually participate in Burning Man, why even go?
In this case, it's more a matter of "look what I can do with my money".
On a much smaller scale, I do the same thing by paying my two employees a little above market rate, and then brag about it on the internet, so there's that :)
For status and bragging rights. I flew to Monaco to shop on Monday, and by Wednesday I was "camping" at Burning Man, being all counter-cultural and stuff.
This kind of reminds me about the case of a rich Chinese woman who took a helicopter ride to Mount Everest.
[edit: the rhetorical point I was trying to make was not about tents!]