Imagine you getting tickets for the most exciting music festival of all time.
There will be tropical weather, amazing bands, famous celebrities, luxury villas and Instagrammable moments.
Imagine it’s all you have been waiting for, collecting all your money and enthusiasm for the greatest festival ever.
Now imagine the opposite of it. You reach at the festival and find nothing but a bare Island.
You get to sleep on a wet mattress, eat stale bread, have no phone reception, and can only hear the sound of angry crowds.
That’s exactly what the disaster took place in 2017 in the greatest party that never happened.
If you were active in the social media back then, you would probably know about the Fyre festival.
From the models advertising for the promotional video to the influencers used for the festival created a massive buzz back then.
Well, if you weren’t quite active those days and weren’t aware about what Fyre festival was about, here’s an article for you.
What was the Fyre Festival?
Fyre Festival was promoted as a “luxury music festival” taking place in April-May of 2017 in the Bahamas.
The event was co-organized by famous rapper Ja Rule and promoted by models like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid.
A young entrepreneur named Billy McFarland was working with rapper Ja Rule on a app called Fyre designed to let ordinary people book talent.
To promote the app, they decided to throw a massive party- which eventually morphed into Fyre Festival.
So, where did it go wrong?
Netflix Documentary Explains it All
Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, shows that the real victims of this ill-fated project were the people who went to Bahamas and the locals.
The locals who built the site which were never paid. One restaurant owner claims that she spent about $50,000 of her savings paying staffs, whose wages should have been covered by the festival organizers.
About five months before the event was due to take place, Billy flew a group of supermodels, including Bella Hadid and Hailey Baldwin to the Bahamas and shot a promo video.
The promotional video looked so luxurious will super-yachts, sunshine, big lodges and massive beach that went viral in no time.
Social Media Posts
Scores of celebrities and influencers were paid to post a cryptic orange tile, with a link to the Fyre Festival website on their Instagram feeds.
Kendall Jenner was reportedly paid $250,000 and withing 48 hours almost 95% of the tickets got sold.
Breathtaking Stupidity
In one moment of breathtaking stupidity, Billy and his team decided to host the festival on the same weekend as a popular sailing regatta in the Bahamas.
Majority of accommodation in the country was already booked up. But how cool, no one even realized the thing until all the tickets were sold out and people were ready to come to the festival.
The accommodations and food that they had promised to provide in their website was going to be completely different.
One day before the festival, it started to rain and socked all the mattresses inside the tent which brought another tightness to the team.
It goes on and on, but even when the money ran out and the lie began to be exposed, Billy refused to change the course.
Instead, he insisted to go ahead and when the guests arrived, it was worse than you could possibly imagine.
There were mattresses all over the places getting soaked, people getting mad and the organizers, fighting for getting tents.
Trust me, it was the worst scenario for every people who had been out there to the team members who had been working day and night for the festival to be successful.
After Watching The Documentary
Sadly the two young bloods exited and enthused to do something great didn’t have any idea where it would go.
It could have been much better if they had planned everything up earlier about the budget, staffs, accommodation, and other stuffs before advertising it as grand.
The team advertised the festival in a massive way without even looking at the consequences, then started planning the party.
It was a small Island where there was little place to fit in 1000 people. There were no toilets, no proper food services at all.
If the Fyre team had come up with a plan to manage those things first and see how it would have worked and later advertised about it, it would not have got worse.
The other worst thing was Billy’s ego. After such huge circumstances Billy was not going to let the festival go.
His team members suggested him to call off the plan and apologies to people to make things less worsen.
But, instead he wanted it to work out no matter what and kept on lying to the people, his team members, staffs and the investors.
In fact, he even fired one of his staffs for telling that the plan would not work out.
All the team of Fyre and other staffs that he had hired had no choice but to continue with the plan because their money was stuck on the project.
The Repercussions of the Fyre Festival
After eight lawsuits were bought against Billy related to Fyre Festival, he was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud.
For his part, Ja Rule has been busy distancing himself from the ordeal, posting a message on Twitter calming it to be hustled.
