Update: Read the official statement from Fyre Festival co-founder Billy MacFarland
Fyre Festival has turned out to be quite the disaster, to put it lightly. Attendees, some of whom literally forked over thousands and thousands of dollars for what they expected to be a lavish experience, were greeted on festival grounds at the Bahamas by an experience that was everything except the luxurious, supermodel-filled getaway which they had been promised.
You may know of the festival, which is run by Ja Rule and Billy McFarlandâs Fyre Media company, thanks to their heavily sponsored content campaign which was promoted on Instagram and other social media outlets by the likes of Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and Bella Hadid. The glamorous offerings, however, didn’t quite live up to expectations.
While thousands got to witness the shambles waiting for them in the Bahamas, many didn’t even get to fly to the Caribbean island, with all flights scheduled to depart to the destination reportedly cancelled after initial news of the disaster zone awaiting them began to make the social media rounds.
But let’s backtrack a bit and discuss what happened at the festival itself. Consequence of Sounds reports: those who made it to the grounds discovered soon enough that it was a far cry from the oasis they were promised. Tickets to the festival ran between $4,000 and $12,000, with the price of admission including a chartered flight from Miami, private villas to sleep in, yacht rides with gorgeous models, and performances from the likes of G.O.O.D. Music, Major Lazer, Blink-182, Disclosure, and more. On paper it all sounded great, if you’re the kind of person that is into that super exclusive douchebag festival experience. In reality, festival grounds were littered with half-built tents and mountains of trash. Catered meals were nothing more than a slice of bread and cheese, with a salad garnish for good measure. As night fell, the situation became even more chaotic, with festival staff and security nowhere to be found. Luggage was thrown out of the back of a truck to an awaiting mob. There were reports of feral dogs running loose through the festival grounds, and some attendees allege to have gotten into verbal and physical confrontations with locals. All the while, flights to the island have been cancelled.
What ensued was a slew of tweets depicting just how bad and dangerous the situation was and, in true unforgiving Internet fashion, throwing some humor on the fiery situation… pun intended. William Needham Finley IV took to his Twitter to document the experience in brilliant detail and with great humor:
Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t the only one to unleash some humor on the situation:
As can be seen from the tweets above, most of those who originally made it to the festival grounds found ways to leave and fly back to the mainland United States. Needless to say we strongly doubt that Weekend II â yes Fyre Festival was meant to run over the space of this weekend and the next, pretty unheard of for a first-time festival â will take place. Instead we assume that organizers will be dealing with a few lawsuits or perhaps a class action suit from the hundreds of (possibly) wealthy attendees that were scammed out of thousands of dollars to receive what turned out to be a fairly realistic disaster relief experience.
The festival’s social channels have been unsurprisingly quiet, except for the following misleading, uninformative and frankly dishonest Instagram post blaming all the above vicissitudes to mere “growing pains.” We honestly doubt they will have much of a chance to do any growing following this…
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H/T: Consequence of Sound
