Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened
Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is out now. Fyre Festival took place on an island in the Bahamas over a weekend in April 2017. Luxury lodgings and the finest cuisine was also pledged. But the Bahamian locals who built the site were never paid. And one restaurant owner claims she spent about $50,000 (Dh184,000) on paying staff.
Billy McFarland was working with rapper Ja Rule on an app called Fyre. It was designed to let ordinary people book talent. Within 48 hours, 95 per cent of tickets had sold. He decided to host the festival on the same weekend as a popular sailing regatta. The tents, which are supposed to be luxury, are left-over hurricane tents.
Even when the money runs out and the lie begins to be exposed, he insists the festival must go ahead. For all its intrigue, Fyre Festival is really just an extreme example of the lie we are sold when we start scrolling. It promised guests happiness and then made them miserable. The Fyre Festival conman, Billy McFarland, was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. Maryann Rolle lost $50,000 and Ja Rule claimed he was “scammed, hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray”.
An online fund has already reached $160,000 for the restaurant owner whose business was wiped out by the festival’s organisers. It wasn’t long before they were trying to sell tickets to other exclusive events – depressingly, with some success.
Random Citizen 