The Failue of Social Media A complete timelime of the Fyre Festival
Introduction:
Fyre Festival was a fraudulent "luxury music festival" founded by Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc, and rapper Ja Rule, and created with the intent of promoting the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.
Scheduled for two weekends in April and May 2017, the event sold day tickets from US$500 to US$1,500, and VIP packages including airfare and luxury tent accommodation for US$12,000. Customers were promised accommodation in "modern, eco-friendly, geodesic domes" and meals from celebrity chefs. The final advertised lineup was for 33 groups, including Pusha T, Tyga, Desiigner, Blink-182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, Migos, Rae Sremmurd, Kaytranada, Lil Yachty, Matoma, Klingande, Skepta, Claptone, Le Youth, Tensnake, Blond:ish, and Lee Burridge.
Introduction:
Scheduled for two weekends in April and May 2017, the event sold day tickets from US$500 to US$1,500, and VIP packages including airfare and luxury tent accommodation for US$12,000. Customers were promised accommodation in "modern, eco-friendly, geodesic domes" and meals from celebrity chefs. The final advertised lineup was for 33 groups, including Pusha T, Tyga, Desiigner, Blink-182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, Migos, Rae Sremmurd, Kaytranada, Lil Yachty, Matoma, Klingande, Skepta, Claptone, Le Youth, Tensnake, Blond:ish, and Lee Burridge.
2016:
Fyre Co-Founder Billy McFarland created a innovated app that would allow people to book artist and other celebrities personally. Along with his partner and fellow co-founder, Ja Rule named this Fyre and to promote the app, wanted to throw a wild music festival like none had ever seen.
Farland and Ja Rule scouted various locations in the Bahamas in 2016 to before coming across “Norman’s Cay”, the former private island of Carlos Legder Rivas, a former leader of the Medellin Cartel.
2016:
After gaining access to the beach under the strict rules of not mentioning “Pablo Escobar” in any sort of social media, McFarland and Ja Rule fly dozens of super models and influencers to promote Fyre Festival. Models like Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski and Hailey Baldwin participated in various shoots for mass marketing which quickly gain traction. "an immersive music festival ... two transformative weekends ... on the boundaries of the impossible". This was the beginning of the Fyre Festival's promotional campaign
2017:
In early 2017, after a promotional video was released on social media advertising Norman's Cay as "once owned by Pablo Escobar", the owners immediately cancelled the arrangement with McFarland. Now they only had four months before their festival was set to premiere.
2017:
After several small islands that seemed like likely venues were turned down, two months to go before the Fyre Festival, the Bahamian government gave McFarland a permit to use a site set aside for development at Roker Point on Great Exuma, just north of the Sandals Resort. Material released on social media continued to promote the falsehood that the Festival was being hosted on Pablo Escobar's private island, with maps of the site altered to make it appear as if Roker Point was an island unto itself when in reality, it was now in a remote parking lot north of the Sandals Resort.
2017:
In the days leading up to the festival, all of the musical acts began to pull out. Major Lazer never confirmed their attendance despite being advertised constantly.
To make matters worse, organizers of the Fyre Festival planned their first event on April 28-30th on the same weekend as the Exuma Regatta, a Bahamian sailing race series that utilized all of the island’s hotels, vacation rentals and resources.
2017:
In March, Fyre hired a veteran event producer, Yaron Lavi, who saw that it was impossible to hold the sort of event McFarland and Ja Rule envisioned at the site. He assumed they would postpone the event to November as they had been discussing since they were not ready.
However, when Fyre told him they would stage the event in the spring anyway, Lavi told them to abandon plans for temporary villas and instead erect tents, the only accommodation that could be delivered in the time remaining. Lavi advised Fyre to make this clear to those who had already bought tickets, as otherwise it would be damaging to their brand. He says the company assured him that an email was being prepared, but none were sent.
2017:
In April, after sending staff to the Bahamas for a site visit and putting together an 100-page plan outlining meal offerings and staffing, high-end caterer Starr Catering Group pulls out of its contract with Fyre Festival. The reason? Festival organizers rejected the caterer’s six-figure cost, according to Bloomberg, and said they could find other caterers for the event with the budget they had.
On the 27th, the day before the festival Blink-182 drops out as a headliner. “We’re not confident that we would have what we need to give you the quality of performances we always give our fans,” they wrote in a statement.
Festival Day!
Initial arrivals were brought to an "impromptu beach party" at a beachside restaurant, where they were plied with alcohol and kept waiting for around six hours while frantic preparations at the festival site continued. McFarland had hired hundreds of local Bahamian workers to help build the site. Meanwhile, organizers had to renegotiate the guarantees they offered to the people who would be playing at the festival as costs spiraled out of control. Later arrivals were brought directly to the grounds by school bus where the true state of the festival's site became apparent: their accommodations were little more than scattered disaster relief tents with dirt floors, some with mattresses that were soaking wet as a result of the morning rain. The gourmet food accommodations were nothing more than inadequate and poor quality food (including cheese sandwiches served in foam containers).
Festival Day!
Festival-goers were dropped off at the production bungalow where McFarland and his team were based so they could be registered, but after hours of waiting in vain, people rushed to claim their own tents.Although there were only about 500 people, there were not enough tents and beds for the guests, so they wound up stealing from others. Attendees were unable to leave the festival for the nearby Sandals resorts as it was peak season, with almost every hotel on Great Exuma already fully booked for the annual Exuma Regatta. Around nightfall, a group of local musicians took to the stage and played for a few hours, the only act to perform at the event. In the early morning, it was announced that the festival would be postponed and that the attendees would be returned to Miami as soon as possible.
Reports from the festival mentioned various other problems, such as the mishandling or theft of guests' baggage, no lighting to help people find their way around, an unfinished gravel lot, a lack of medical personnel or event staff, no cell phone or internet service, portable toilets, no running water and heavy-handed security. These problems were exacerbated as the festival had been promoted as a cashless event, leaving many attendees without money for taxi fare or other expenses.
Festival Day!
Many attendees were reportedly stranded, as flights to and from the island were cancelled after the Bahamian government issued an order that barred any planes from landing at the airport.
The first flight back to Miami boarded at 1:30 a.m. on April 28, but was delayed for hours due to issues with the flight's manifest. It was cancelled after sunrise, and passengers were locked in the Exuma Airport terminal with no access to food, water or air conditioning; a passenger recalled that at least one person passed out from the heat and had to be hospitalized.
Festival Day!
The flight eventually left Exuma that morning, and more charter flights to Miami departed from Exuma throughout the day. One attendee who was stuck in Miami reported that the pilot of their airplane had told them to get off so they could turn the plane around for immediate departure, as they were now serving as a rescue aircraft to get attendees off Great Exuma Island.
The Aftermath!
As a result of the festival, McFarland and Ja Rule are the subject of a $100 million lawsuit in the state of California. It was filed on behalf of plaintiff Daniel Jung by entertainment lawyer Mark Geragos, who is seeking class action status for the lawsuit with more than 150 plaintiffs. Per the filing, Jung's lawsuit alleges fraud, breach of contract (partly because of the decision by the organizers to make the festival cashless so that attendees didn't bring money for taxis), breach of covenant of good faith (partly due to the inadequate catering and the incident where attendees were locked in the airport) and negligent misrepresentation. Ben Meiselas of Geragos's firm pledged to hold "all those who recklessly and blindly promoted the festival" accountable, which was interpreted as being directed at Jenner, Hadid, and other social media influencers. A Geragos lawyer stated that Fyre Festival sent cease and desist letters to whistleblowers
Ja Rule posted a note on Twitter that said "it was NOT A SCAM" and "this is NOT MY FAULT".
The Aftermath!
Fyre Festival posted a statement on their website:
Fyre Festival set out to provide a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience on the Islands of the Exumas. Due to circumstances out of our control, the physical infrastructure was not in place on time and we are unable to fulfill on that vision safely and enjoyably for our guests. At this time, we are working tirelessly to get flights scheduled and get everyone off of Great Exuma and home safely as quickly as we can. We ask that guests currently on-island do not make their own arrangements to get to the airport as we are coordinating those plans. We are working to place everyone on complimentary charters back to Miami today; this process has commenced and the safety and comfort of our guests is our top priority. The festival is being postponed until we can further assess if and when we are able to create the high-quality experience we envisioned. We ask for everyone's patience and cooperation during this difficult time as we work as quickly and safely as we can to remedy this unforeseeable situation. We will continue to provide regular updates via email to our guests and via our official social media channels as they become available.
The Aftermath!
Many news organizations compared the chaos to William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies and Suzanne Collins's novel The Hunger Games. The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism apologized on behalf of the nation, and denied having any responsibility for how the events unfolded. The workers who constructed the site, and the restaurant that provided meals for festival staff, were never paid, leading to the restaurant owner appealing for assistance on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.
Fyre Festival announced that it would offer all attendees a choice between a full refund or VIP tickets to the following year's festival
But there would be no next time.
In October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit US $26 million.
