About Otis Spankmore
In the beginning…
Starting in 2010, Otis Spankmore was inspired by Black Rock Diner. Bringing fresh baked cookies to the masses. Why chocolate chip cookies? The experience one could have by walking up to the Black Rock Diner, smelling the grilled cheese, tasting it, and enjoying the comfort from the food, had to be created in a simalar way. Chocolate chip cookies, freshly baked, and still warm gives a very similar experience.
Why Spanking?
There isn’t really a reason. At best it’s a cheeky pavlovian spin on Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. Something of a satire if you will. Burning Man is a place to experience and try things, to get involved, and to learn something new about yourself or your friends. A lot of people involved would say not to take things ‘too seriously’ and really, getting a spanking and a cookie… there is nothing serious about that.
The experience helps condition people to associate spankings with cookies through “a learning process in which an innate response to a potent stimulus comes to be elicited in response to a previously neutral stimulus.”1
Who would do something like this?
What if I just want a cookie, I don’t want to get spanked. Well, whats the fun in that? You didn’t come out to Burning Man to sit on the sidelines and watch. The spanking is not designed to hurt people. It’s not used as a form of punishment within our event. No one is forced, and if you don’t want a spanking, you don’t have to have one. You just won’t get a cookie either.
1. Wikipedia: Classical Conditioning