Meanwhile at Fyrd Fest pic.twitter.com/Q4geMXqcKU
— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) May 1, 2017
Looks like the ‘Fyre Festival’ may end up heralding the Trump era the same way Altamont did the Nixon years…
Fyre Festival organizers blew all their money early on models, planes and yachts https://t.co/obxu6JMBni pic.twitter.com/XR2zCEcCyL
— VICE News (@vicenews) May 4, 2017
… Interviews with dozens of people, including former Fyre employees, contractors, and potential investors, reveal the organizers behind Fyre Fest knew months in advance that they were not going to be able to provide even a fraction of what they were selling. Despite the glossy marketing, McFarland and his company, Fyre Media, had little to offer investors beyond a now-infamous photoshoot featuring 10 of IMG’s most popular models, and a press release touting a partnership with YachtLife, a luxury yacht charter app.
Serious logistical planning for the festival didn’t even begin until late February or early March — less than two months before the thousands of people McFarland had sold a luxury vacation on a private island were scheduled to arrive…
If Fyre Festival seemed last-minute, that’s because it was. McFarland thought of the idea in October 2016 and announced the festival on Instagram a month later, spending millions on models, private jets, and yachts to promote what would be his first-ever large-scale event, sources familiar with the planning said.
He spent $250,000 on a single Instagram post from Kim Kardashian’s half-sister Kendall Jenner and laid out hundreds of thousands more on lesser-name “influencers,” none of whom were paid less than $20,000, one person familiar with the payments said.
Only one model — “Gone Girl” actress Emily Ratajkowski — labeled her promotion as an ad, as required by the Federal Trade Commission. The other models’ omissions are now the subject of a class-action lawsuit…
Despite a pitch deck that promised 10,000 ticket-holders each weekend, sales were low and largely discounted. Most buyers had paid somewhere between $500 and $2,000 for their tickets, despite outlandish claims that people were purchasing ticket packages for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The target audience wasn’t elite or affluent people — it was people who wanted the lifestyle but couldn’t afford it, until Fyre Festival came along…During that time, several former employees and one manager for artists slotted to play the festival confirmed, most people were having trouble getting paid, and those who were getting paid were getting money directly from McFarland. Payroll abruptly stopped in the Fyre Media office in October, according to one employee at the company…
The festival’s first website was also pulled — after Fyre failed to pay the company that created it, a former Fyre employee said.
On Thursday, festival organizers, including McFarland, started warning celebrity VIP guests not to come, according to a $100 million lawsuit filed Sunday by Mark Geragos…
Issie Lapowsky, at Wired, takes the high (minded) road:
… Sure, everyone loves a good millennial shaming, and yes, it’s pretty satisfying when corporate fraudsters get epically outed. But try to suspend your schadenfreude for just the moment. Because maybe you wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars to swim with pigs or head bang to Blink182 on the beach, but the Fyre Festival ordeal reveals just how vulnerable all of us are to manipulation online, where a hashtag and a finely cropped image can cause us to lose all sense of caveat emptor…
Even President Trump’s own staff credits social media with getting him elected. The former reality TV star spent years preaching about politics in 140-characters or less until enough of the electorate finally took him for a politician.
Instead of Fyre Fest refunds, ticket-buyers can get VIP passes to next year's Fyre Fest https://t.co/jlr63ZTkMR pic.twitter.com/iKJL2GjMC9
— Stereogum (@stereogum) May 1, 2017
2Fyre2Furious https://t.co/mb11bGverJ
— ?_? (@MikeIsaac) May 1, 2017
amk
It’s all reality teevee, man.
Major Major Major Major
In what POSSIBLE use case would an app provide added value for this over, say, a phone number?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Apps are cool and trendy; phones, so 20th century.
Mnemosyne
I saw a preview of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 tonight. If you didn’t like the first one, this one won’t win you over, but it’s very satisfying for fans and answers a lot of the questions raised in the first one.
Chris Pratt is pretty much the only actor I can think of who can play an immature kinda-douchebag and still be appealing because he lets the panicked little boy peek out just often enough. And, okay, the shirtless scene didn’t hurt.
Redshift
Yes, no one ever got scammed before the internet…
I realize Wired is obligated to make everything about technology, but I am heartily sick of hearing/reading “these kids today” arguments blaming the net or smart phones or whatever for problems that have existed since before the author was born.
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that each change of technology brings a false sense of security with it. I’m sure that the first person who was conned using forged cuneiform tablets was shocked and outraged that a trusted technology had failed him.
bystander
@Mnemosyne: I’ve watched the first one at least 5 times trying to catch all the lines. Pratt is great, but of course Rocket is my favorite. Can’t wait for Vol. 2.
I was also surprised that I enjoyed Rogue One since the last Star Wars and Jurassic Park installments sucked in the worst way.
Adam L Silverman
Mnemosyne
@bystander:
Well, I liked The Force Awakens, so you may not be able to rely on my opinion, but I really liked it and the friend I saw it with also liked it. It’s not quite as good as the first one, but still really entertaining.
montanareddog
@Adam L Silverman: It is a sad commentary on our times that it would take the death of QEII to push Trump off the front pages for a few days
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@montanareddog: Given their relative influence on people’s lives, right up to world peace or lack thereof, I’m not sure why we would want trump off the front pages in favor of Old Betty. He doesn’t get weaker or less dangerous if we ignore him. In fact I think, with the AHCA where it is, it would be a huge mistake to indulge in a lot of vicarious and selective nostalgia about Helen Mirren in a frumpy wig. It would be a huge gift to Republicans in this country
Elizabelle
That Vice article is brutal. Although all of them have been. Kind of a personal touch when the Bahamas refers to you by first name only. (Ja Rule might be happy to see that statement.)
hellslittlestangel
@montanareddog: I’m sure the queen intends to stay alive for the next four years to avoid the indignity of Trump making public remarks about her death. “She wasn’t bad, I guess, but her ass got really saggy in recent years.”
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
It could be Bahamian casualness with formality. Or the fact that one often uses the first name when dressing down an adult for an act of obvious immaturity.
ThresherK
@Redshift: Did you happen to read Wired when a.column.said “let’s get rid of the postal service, and people can get mail wherever private co’s would do the job “?
This was late 90s when the US was doing well enough so crap.like that didn’t result in the Grover Norquist quote, and the inanity of GWB was nothing anyone could foresee. (My predictive spelling wants “corset ” for forsee. Wow!)
The topper was about banks could get into the biz for people in poor neighborhoods,somehow, where FedEx +c didn’t want to do biz. Details fuzzy, long time ago.
Wired is as real-world as Omni was, give or take a.few paintings of space colonies under glass.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: Little Billy. Yep.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: So, Billy is a douchebro? Who coodaknode?
SiubhanDuinne
BBC just reported that the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince PHILIP) will stop doing official engagements effective this coming autumn “with the full support of The Queen.” The Queen will continue to make visits and undertake official engagements. Details coming later in the hour, but apparently that’s what all the excitement was about.
Good. Glad it isn’t anything more dire.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s like, 96.
That does not really sound like a reason for that “emergency meeting” unless they were taking the occasion to review procedures for a family member heading for the great beyond.
FWIW, here’s the Guardian’s long article, earlier this year, on plans in place for QE2s’s demise.
‘London Bridge is down’: the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death
She is venerated around the world. She has outlasted 12 US presidents. She stands for stability and order. But her kingdom is in turmoil, and her subjects are in denial that her reign will ever end. That’s why the palace has a plan.
I hope Liz outlasts Trump. I hope we all do.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, he’ll turn 96 next month. Seems to be in robust health just going by photos of him taken yesterday, but I’m sure he’s tired — and he has had two or three serious health scares in recent years.
BBC saying now that he’ll carry out everything currently on his schedule but won’t accept new invitations after August. And they point out, correctly, that he’s been giving signals about his stepping down from official engagements for at least five years.
Evidently the combined Royal Households meet once a year anyhow, so my suspicion is that it was social media or the tabloids that labeled this one an “emergency.”
Saw that “London Bridge” article when it was published. Fascinating stuff. Thanks for posting the link — I’ll read it again with heightened interest.
NotMax
It’s like Pets.com all over again, ain’t it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Does MSNBC have this as breaking news?
* pronounced: “Millford”, because shut up, Yank
NotMax
Guess the speculation that Liz would officially come out of the closet was premature.
MattF
Also, a footnote to the Fyre mishaps– the brief reference to Pablo Escobar in that ad was (IMO) a coded reassurance to potential customers that Illegal Substances Will Be Available. Just in case any of the idle wealthy idiots they were trying to appeal to didn’t get the hint.
NotMax
With a presidential election upcoming in just over two weeks, this will roil the field.
Kristine
@Mnemosyne: Yea! Seeing it tomorrow. Thing is, I didn’t like GG1 when it first came out. It grew on me, though. I enjoy it as long as I don’t compare it to Winter Soldier, which is hands-down my favorite Marvel film.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Raymond Luxury Yacht”
NorthLeft12
@Mnemosyne: There is a Dairy Queen commercial out that plays to the Star Lord/Chris Pratt attraction. Its actually kinda funny.
NorthLeft12
@SiubhanDuinne: Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t Adam put in his original comment that the staff meeting was “NOT ABOUT THEIR HEALTH”?
Reading the comments on this thread talking about Queen Elizabeth dying is a short primer on how rumours get started/spread/live on.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
So basically all they had to offer was Boats ‘N Hoes? Who produced this event, Prestige Worldwide?
Rand Careaga
To a child just beginning to pay attention to the wider world at the tail end of the fifties, the leading figures appeared as parts of the landscape: Eisenhower. Nehru. Macmillan. Khrushchev. Mao. De Gaulle. Adenauer. Nasser. Castro. Chiang Kai-Shek. And of course, the Queen. Fixed and immutable as the stars, all of them, until one after another they weren’t. But I’m still half convinced that Elizabeth II will outlive Charles and William.
Bitter Scribe
So Kendall Jenner got more money for one single Instagram post than I have in my retirement account?
You know, I’ve tried to pay at least lip service to the principle that you’re worth whatever you can convince someone to pay you. That’s the basis for a free capitalist society. That’s why I don’t lose my shit when I read about, say, ballplayers getting tens of millions a year. But no one will ever be able to convince me that Kendall Jenner deserves a quarter of a million dollars for an Instagram post. There comes a time when you really have to worry about people breaking out the pitchforks and torches.
Barney
I happen to be re-watching Parks and Recreation, and it’s impossible not to imagine Tom Haverford at the heart of Fyre Fest.