Will the Fyre Festival fiasco ever end?
In many ways, it seems a lifetime ago since the words ‘Fyre Festival’ first crossed our lips, but since the fated fraudulent fiasco erupted into the world some seven years ago, in 2017, it has rarely left pop culture parlance since. It’s been the moral blind spot of the industry for all that time, exposing that the discourse of music, celebrities, influencers and, of course, the festival itself, is rotten to the core.
When the Fyre Fest concept first started floating on the interwebs almost a decade ago, it was touted as a once-in-a-lifetime experience that would reinvent the whole notion of live music events. However, in retrospect, it only really uncovered our collective naivety around social media at the time, which saw celebrities from the Kardashians to Bella Hadid advertising it without the disclosure that they had been paid to do so. The smell was fishy at best.
Of course, we all know what happened next. Thousands flocked to The Bahamas, only to find crickets. Nothing. Nada. Thus, the chaos ensued. The world’s press went into a dive, a Netflix documentary was rushed into production, and the following year, in 2018, founder Billy McFarland was charged with fraud offences and sentenced to six years in jail. So, that was the end of the story…or not.
At the beginning of this year, a notoriously familiar rumble started up on social media all over again. Fyre Festival was going to be back, bigger, better—and perhaps more fraudulent—than ever before. It goes without saying that the situation went down in an almost play-by-play scenario of what everyone predicted. The festival was meant to take place in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in April after McFarland was released from prison, but alas, the event was cancelled with mere weeks to go. Who would have thought it?
What’s the future for Fyre Festival?
You’d think after such an attention-seeking ruckus that the Fyre Festival would simply be left to the pop culture graveside of days gone by. After all, it’s old news now, and the joke has long since worn thin. But evidently, this is not a feeling shared by the festival organisers, who, after realising that staging events may not be their thing, are attempting to branch out into a million other, inevitably doomed business ventures.
There’s the alleged Fyre music streaming service, for starters, which you can hardly imagine ever living up to rival a platform like Spotify, let alone even make a drop in the ocean. Then, most recently, after McFarland had reportedly sold his assets in the business, but subsequently magically came back onboard, they announced a characteristically vague hotel experience set to take place in September this year. Needless to say, all of this had more than a pretty penny attached.
So, what exactly is the point in all of this? A cash grab, and a last-ditch attempt at staying notoriously relevant, of course, but there are arguably also some more pernicious elements at play. Figures like McFarland represent the impossible dream when it comes to the music world, the unlikely underdog who no one believes will ever actually yield any power, until in the blink of an eye, they’re at the top of the tree. Compare it to politics, and does this story suddenly become hauntingly familiar?
McFarland has all the hallmarks of a Trumpian morality: the crooked businessman turned global mega power, using all the bent techniques and skewed tactics to gain his own way. While it’s unlikely the next presidential campaign will read McFarland 2028, it’s the same principle that if we take our eyes off the ball, people like him could soon become far bigger figureheads in the music industry than we would ever like them to be. You may think Fyre Festival is a thing of the past, but if there’s anything their latest ventures prove, they’re prepared to stop at nothing until they get to the top.
