The Talk to God phone booth first appeared at Burning Man in 2003, the brainchild of a group of artists from Ojai, California, who camped together under the banner OBOP, short for “Ojai Bureau of Pleasure.” While many installations only make the difficult trek to the Nevada desert once, the booth has been there, in different iterations, every year since. As she spoke, a picture of the Talk to God phone booth appeared over her left shoulder, an example of an iconic piece in a bizarro pantheon. The crown, occupied by the House of Valois, generally supported the Catholic side, but on occasion switched over to the Protestant cause when it was politically expedient. Over 16 years, thousands of people have interacted with the installation, placing a call or answering one. Their religious legacy is among the factors that condition people throughout their lives, although people as individuals have diverse reactions to their legacies. Through these outreach programs, the Islamic Centre promotes mutual respect, tolerance, and acceptance among individuals of different faiths. On the first day I met her she wore flowers in her hair and electric blue lipstick that somehow stayed perfectly applied for the entire week of dry, lip-cracking desert heat.

The ads were very unconventional and often quite inappropriate, which is fairly rare, even in 2017. They poked fun at clichés, broke the fourth wall, and released a 12 Days of Deadpool series of small clips before the official second trailer released on Christmas Day. Within days they found an abandoned booth already missing its phone by a highway, and mined it for parts: hinges, handles, a ceiling unit that housed its lights, and the shelf where the phone rested. Using these parts and some plywood, they built a slightly enlarged replica of a classic Ma Bell booth, and the first Talk to God phone was born. I talked to both Jaye and Miles, and to Scott who helped build the first booth, about my unnerving God Phone experience before going back this year, and none were surprised. Jaye – who goes by “Yay” at Burning Man – was shepherding the phone booth.

Would-be callers formed an impromptu catalogue of Burning Man fashion: tutus, bedazzled military hats, leather fanny packs, and dusty combat boots on every foot. At trial, his lawyer tried to convince the military commission that he was a simple-minded man who had been manipulated by Booth. The English countryside was plagued by scavengers, highwaymen and vagabonds-a newly visible class of the poor who strained the ancient charity laws and pressed upon the townsfolk new questions of social responsibility. Lighter questions (What do you think about Christmas?) and universal ones (Why do you let natural disasters happen?) were peppered with confessions (I’m in love with someone but I’m married to someone else) and personal requests (Can you watch over my son in rehab? I’m worried this might be his last shot). Many people had gotten used to thinking of Twitter as a sort of public space, a digital town square where every reasonable person could find their own soapbox, and perhaps even a few people to stop and listen to them once in a while.

Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention. This year, a clipboard holding a bright orange piece of paper rested by the God Phone. Around that time, he attended Burning Man and found the God Phone. OBOP member Michael Shevchuk remembered four muses merging in his brain to form the concept: Burning Man’s 2003 art theme “Beyond Belief”; a line from a U2 song (“God has got his phone off the hook, babe, would he even pick up if he could?”); an exchange between a fictionalized Andy Warhol and Jim Morrison in the film The Doors (“Somebody gave me this telephone. “The conversations we have on the God Phone are very similar to the conversations I used to have with my god,” Benji said. A 30-something named Benji sat beside me in the huddle, his plain gray T-shirt and khaki shorts the most nonconformist outfit in a sea of eccentrics. The whole setup sat atop a plush black carpet patterned with geometric shapes in bright, elementary-school colors.