FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened Documentary

[notorious]

Just finished watching this on Netflix. It is fascinating, yet I feel dirty watching how Billy MacFarland ****ed over so many people.

If you enjoy documentaries, watch it now.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

By the festival goers? No. By the people who worked for Fyre's media apparatus and got rat ****ed? Possibly. By the day laborers of an island nation? Probably don't have that luxury.

That said, both this an American Meme make a pretty compelling argument for the systematic liquidation of all social media influencers.

By the financiers and people that traffic in 'influencers'...

As for the folks working for Fyre...well I suspect they'll latch onto the next big thing as well. Everyone wants to be or know the next Dan Bilzerian and folks of that ilk. The 'influencer' phenomenon of people who are famous an account of being famous is something that's just not going to go away any time soon.

And when the hangers on bury their heads in the sand, I look to my signature below from Bojack - when you see it all through rose colored glasses, the red flags just don't mean anything to you.

[underEJ]

On its own, I wasn't that impressed with it as a documentary. It felt a bit too convenient how many of them were so fooled. I watched it first, and then watched the Hulu one, and I think you have to watch them both for it to be a complete documentary (though both are deeply flawed by questionable ethical choices.) The Netflix doc is heavily influenced by the PR group that promoted Fyre, and consequently it is compromised ethically because they paint their own contributions as ignorance at worst, and innocence at best. The Hulu doc dives in to their culpability. On the other hand, the Hulu producers have an interview with Billy MacFarland that the Netflix group does not. Ethically, this is questionable because they paid him for it. Even with the taint of the payment though, there are a couple of very revealing moments.

[Buehler445]

What is the Hulu one called?

[underEJ]

It is called Fyre Fraud.

[cooper barrett]

Interesting read about the 2 documentaries.

https://qz.com/quartzy/1533746/hulus...d-a-scorecard/

[DJ's left nut]

I will say that the hurrah over this is a little outsized.

Yes, many rank/file workers in the Bahamas got ****ed, but did anyone notice the tenor of the workers? Many of them did come across as "hey, lets milk the rich Americans..." It makes for a fairly interesting argument both for and against dependency theory, but it was an interesting takeaway nontheless. And it's not as though these were folks who quit their jobs to come work for MacFarland for a year; these were mostly day laborers who lost out on a few bucks that they wouldn't have had either way had MacFarland not tried to dupe a bunch of idiots. It's a screw job, but it's no sort of tragedy writ large.

And most of those defrauded were a bunch of snobbish, rich assholes who are EXACTLY the kind of people I like seeing separated from their money - folks that largely didn't earn it anyway. A whole lot of "daddy's money" was flushed down the toilet here.

There are a handful of figures who did truly get boned. The woman who ran the restaurant and plowed all her savings into it to get the festival workers fed - that sucks hard. And yes, it always sucks to work for free. But this is more akin to a hysterically convoluted and ultimately failed Kickstarter project than it is a human tragedy.

And at the very least, the victims in this case weren't disproportionately downtrodden to begin with. A lot of fools and their money were parted here.

[notorious]

I wouldn’t mind throwing away 3-6 months of work so some douchbag can hide millions in a scam. /no one ever

[BryanBusby]

It's pretty easy actually. Pay a couple celebs to do some social media posts and the event will sell itself. The event was social status more than anything to sucket stupid rich kids out of their money. The greatest troll.

Spoiler!

I know someone that fell for it

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by notorious

I wouldn’t mind throwing away 3-6 months of work so some douchbag can hide millions in a scam. /no one ever

When you tie yourself, voluntarily, to a bizarre svengali of sorts and you agree to work on credit for him, you expose yourself to those risks.

His "team" drank the kool-aid and allowed themselves to be taken in. And many of them were in some ways complicit - they were down there, they knew the 'luxury private island experience' he was selling was bullshit. And beyond that, many of them WERE getting paid still up until the last couple of weeks when he ran out of investors to tap for emergency capital.

This isn't Robert Courtney watering down cancer drugs here. That's a fraud that devolved into human tragedy. This is a tale as old as time: huckster over-promises and under-delivers. The fact that it looped in a bunch of social media 'influencers' and wealthy young socialites is the only reason it's newsworthy. Take away that kind of flash and the substance is a hell of a lot more benign than the attention its garnered.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by BryanBusby

It's pretty easy actually. Pay a couple celebs to do some social media posts and the event will sell itself. The event was social status more than anything to sucket stupid rich kids out of their money. The greatest troll.

Spoiler!

I know someone that fell for it

Here's the thing - you ALMOST want to give him credit for an absolutely brilliant marketing strategy.

The reason that guy is in prison right now and not on the cover of Wired is that he couldn't hold his wad. I guess the counter is that he could've never found the startup funds for the infrastructure, etc... that he needed to pull it off WITHOUT the buzz. But if he could have just figured out a way to start from a realistic timetable, the marketing blitz behind it was pretty damn impressive.

[Titty Meat]

Just watched it and think hilarious.

[TwistedChief]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Here's the thing - you ALMOST want to give him credit for an absolutely brilliant marketing strategy.

The reason that guy is in prison right now and not on the cover of Wired is that he couldn't hold his wad. I guess the counter is that he could've never found the startup funds for the infrastructure, etc... that he needed to pull it off WITHOUT the buzz. But if he could have just figured out a way to start from a realistic timetable, the marketing blitz behind it was pretty damn impressive.

Exactly. Give someone an unlimited amount of money that should be used for genuine business purposes but rather is spent entirely on marketing and you can create quite a following, especially in the day and age of the social media influencer.

I have trouble giving him credit for much of anything. Just another example of groupthink and lack of real due diligence.

[sedated]

Originally Posted by TwistedChief

Exactly. Give someone an unlimited amount of money that should be used for genuine business purposes but rather is spent entirely on marketing and you can create quite a following, especially in the day and age of the social media influencer.

I don't think it's just that the money was all spent on marketing, it was also wasted because Billy wanted to live his lavish, lazy lifestyle rather than do any of the actual work. A few times in the doc they pointed out that as soon as he got some investor to send more money, they'd go drinking or water skiing.


Reminds me of friends that obsess over starting a business, but that obsession is limited to the fun stuff (coming up with a name, imagining what it will look like) but never lift a finger on a business plan or doing any of the financial work. Those eventually fade into nothing, but this one had enough money behind it to put people's life in danger.

[vailpass]

Can't stand dude bros. Could not watch.

[notorious]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Can't stand dude bros. Could not watch.

Do you enjoy watching dude bros run a dead sprint into a brick wall?