Post #5

Fyre Festival Chaos 

If you keep up with social media its hard to have missed out on the whole Fyre Festival scandal. What was advertised to be this luxurious, A-list, expensive weekend getaway to a fun festival turned into a complete disaster. Fyre Festival was first advertised with a never before seen, eye-catching video capturing the beautiful sights of Nassau, Bahamas where models and celebrities are seen enjoying themselves at this festival weekend. When festival attenders began to arrive their experience was nothing close to what the video and social media had advertised. This event came crashing down ending with thousands of people stuck on this small island in tents that were not furnished, eating poor quality sandwiches from plastic trays and with the head organizer of it all, Bill McFarland, in jail for fraud.

This story really captures your attention you instantly begin to question what went wrong? At least that was my first reaction. I follow a lot of influencers and celebrities on social media and when I saw them begin posting about this festival on Instagram I was immediately jealous wishing that I could attend the Festival. I began to do some research and this festival looked like a dream. The website offered private villas, boats, yoga sessions, personal chefs, and so much more. From the outside this event looked like it was going to be the event of the century but I was fooled, we all were. No one knew what was going on besides the event planners themselves.

When this scandal was released, platforms instantly took notice and Fyre Festival is now the subject of two new documentaries one on Netflix and the other on Hulu. The Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, focuses closely on the making of the event and the disastrous outcome of it. The organizers tried planning an event that should've taken a year, in six to eight weeks. The part of the documentary that really had an effect on me was the aftermath the failed festival had on the island itself. It wasn't just a terrible experience for the people who attended and paid for it but it had quite the impact on the local people of the island who helped McFarland and the rest of the organizers build the festival. These organizers had so much of the local community help to try and pull this event off. The documentary shows hundreds of workers everyday working tirelessly to fulfill the organizers desires and at the end they weren't eve compensated. One of the restaurant owners of the island had to go into her own personal life savings to pay off her employers because the festival organizers just left the island without compensating the workers.

This festival and what came out of it really shocked me. It had such a high profile that I don't think anyone could have assumed that it would of turned out so terribly. If you are interested in seeing all the failed components of the Fyre Festival and what the organizers did after the festival I highly recommend watching either the Hulu or Netflix documentaries!!