Earlier this month, Hulu and Netflix each released separate documentaries recounting the infamous Fyre Festival and its fraudulent founder, Billy McFarland.
Fyre, for those unfamiliar, was a disastrous 2017 music festival held on the small Bahamian island of Great Exuma. Thanks to an incredible combination of arrogance and incompetence on the part of McFarland and his crew, attendees who had paid hundreds to thousands of dollars for a fantasy-destination music festival experienced neither music nor fantasy and instead found themselves stranded on a barren Caribbean shore without sufficient food and water and forced to sleep in tents.
As we see in both docs, the entire endeavor was a moon-shot doomed from the start. Regardless, McFarland pushed ahead, refusing to listen to reason or confront objective reality. A few people around him spoke up and were pushed out; the rest knew better and went along with the farce anyway. At one point, drowning in debt, unable to resolve even the most basic logistical issues around housing, food, or plumbing, McFarland becomes obsessed with the idea of bringing a pirate ship to the island, to elevate the aesthetic experience. Again and again, we watch him double-down on his fanatical vision, choosing to do everything from falsify documents to commit wire fraud rather than pull up and cut his losses.
The result was a calamitous failure that lost $24 million, leaving investors on the hook, local island workers unpaid, and landing McFarland a six-year sentence in federal prison. Some more culpable members of the festival’s organizing apparatus, such as Fyre co-founder Ja Rule and the social media marketing company Jerry Media, have been named as defendants in a class-action lawsuit.
Hulu’s “Fyre Fraud” interviews McFarland himself, who remains unable to grapple with either the reality of his wrongdoing or his then-impending jail time. In fact, the serial grifter attempts another scam using the festival email list while out on bail. But it’s clear that others interviewed feel somewhat complicit, holding guilt over their involvement in something that, for all the public mockery, harmed innocent people.
Despite its particular absurdity, watching the documented Fyre fiasco felt oddly resonant in the aftermath of the viral Covington incident. When a clearer picture of events emerged, some revised their position; others didn’t. Some recanted, admitted fault, and promised to do better. Others doubled-down, using peripheral fancies to distract from the facts in front of them.
I was lazy and quick to judgment, retweeting a condemnation of an innocent minor to virtue-signal with the in-crowd online, for which I am sorry. Hopefully when the next imbroglio comes, I’ll remember Billy McFarland and Fyre, and think twice.
