Disastrous millennial flameout affects more than just the promoters
A Failure to End All Failures
Unless you have been living several feet under a rock since April 2017, you have heard that the Fyre Festival was a disaster of epic proportions, a Woodstock-gone-wrong for rich millennials. The festival, brought to life by entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, went down like the Titanic wrapped in the Hindenburg with a side order of Holyfield/Tyson II.
Tickets were oversold. Package deals for nonexistent amenities pumped guests for every last dollar. Originally scheduled to be held on the former private island of drug lord Pablo Escobar, the festival was moved at the last minute to an entirely different locale. Supposedly luxurious accommodations turned out to be remaindered hurricane tents, and a last-minute tropical deluge soaked all the beds and furniture. Cheese sandwiches were handed out as meals to high-profile attendees who had laid out up to $12,000 to be there.
Schadenfryde
The new Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened effectively captures the wounded incredulity of the festival's attendees, several of whom were influencers who had been comped in exchange for plugging Fyre on social media.
Alyssa Lynch, famed Instagram and YouTube lifestyle maven, found herself on the festival's unexpectedly subpar 737 jet. She had expected a "branded jet experience."
"It's actually worse than like being low, low economy class," she complained (and here we thought you couldn't go lower than economy!).
Live reports from ground zero of the festival site went viral. When the sun set on the first day, looting broke out over basic amenities, and the internet got a front row seat to the travails of the young, rich and entitled.
"People were stoked to watch this thing go down," shared one festival worker.
The Takeaway
Fyre had such a promising start.
A slick promo featuring some of the world's most recognizable models ‒ Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski among them ‒ introduced the world to Fyre. The models' support on social media, along with support from other big names (Kendall Jenner weighed in as well), amped up the buzz around the festival.
But now that McFarland has been convicted of wire fraud and is sitting in the federal correctional institution in Otisville, New York, the ripple effect of Fyre's collapse is catching up with models and influencers.
The bankruptcy trustee in the festival's liquidation recently won approval for a slate of subpoenas that name several influencers and their management, including Kendall Jenner Inc., IMG Models LLC and DNA Model Management, LLC. The subpoenas will also cover music management companies and a talent agency. "Due to the lack of basic disclosures and books and records, the trustee has been forced to obtain critical financial information related to [Fyre] through third parties," the trustee noted in his request.
All of this is just another sinkhole in a larger legal morass that is swamping some of the world's most beautiful people.
Jenner, for instance, reportedly received a whopping $250,000 from McFarland to promote the festival in a single Instagram post. By omission or design, she allegedly forgot to tag the post as an ad, which is a big no-no as far as the Federal Trade Commission is concerned. An earlier suit against the festival brought by an attendee referenced "DOES 1 through 50," who are "legally responsible in some manner for the events and happenings referred to herein and caused injury and damage proximately thereby ..."
We'll see if this latest round of subpoenas lifts the lid on the arrangements that were made between a famously ill-fated festival and the celebrities who sold it to the public.
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