Fyre Fail

Stories of the Fyre Festival have been shared thousands of times since that unfortunate failure occurred. At first glance, it just looks like a funny story of a bunch of rich kids who got played, but it reveals a deeper insight into the shocking amount of privilege and ignorance that the wealthy are allowed to have.  

The creator of Fyre Fest, Billy McFarland, is an example how all that ignorance can destroy the hard work of innocent people. Long before Fyre festival, Billy McFarland had tried his hand at business after dropping out of Bucknell University before completing his first year and starting the online ad company, Spling. 

McFarland’s second failed attempt at a business was Magnesis, a credit card company that was targeted towards young adults and offered them access to exclusive events. Like Fyre, Magnesis ended up being a scam; he offered luxury experiences like tickets to the Grammy’s and the Met Gala and couldn’t deliver on his promises but kept the money of his unsuspecting customers anyways. 

So why is it that after these disappointments that Billy McFarland was able to create the colossal disaster that was Fyre festival? The answer is obvious: Billy is a rich, overprivileged white guy who’s been given way too much freedom to keep failing in the hopes that one day he might succeed without regards to the consequences of his actions.  

As he was trying to put the Fyre Festival together, Billy traveled to the island of Great Exuma and hired many of the residents to work on the festival around the clock. To put together the festival he had promised, the Fyre workers would have to have built an entire infrastructure on the island within the few weeks that McFarland had hired the people for.  

Throughout the process of attempting to build the festival, he kept promising those who were going to the festival a bigger and more luxurious experience. He advertised shows by people like Blink-182 and rented out villas and apartments that did not exist. As he was doing all this, cash flow became a problem, but somehow, he was managing to secure more and more investors to give him more money.  

As the festival began, the extent of McFarland’s overzealous promises became obvious. Soon after the festival goers arrived, they saw that instead of the luxury villas and gourmet food, they had a disappointing sandwich to eat and hurricane relief tents to sleep in.  

Fyre Festival was a disaster and the laughing stock of the internet.  What many didn’t realize until months later was how this embarrassment had damaged the people of Great Exuma. They had given weeks and weeks of back-breaking labor to that man and had received barely any pay.  

The catering companies who were hired by McFarland had to pay their employees back out of pocket and lost much of their savings. Not only had McFarland taken advantage of innocent and hardworking people, but he was also engaging in criminal behavior. 

It turned out the money that somehow kept coming in was not only from wealthy investors but from victims of the wire fraud that McFarland was running.  As the Fyre Festival was being produced, Billy refused to listen to any of his employees who were practically begging him to push it back or lower the expectations of the people. It was obvious that all he could think about was himself and his success.  

Billy, and people like him, have no boundaries to the extent they’ll go to for their goals. He didn’t care about the people who had given him hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to his festival and he didn’t care about the people of Great Exuma who worked tirelessly to put his vision together.  

His privilege and wealth had allowed him to take advantage of them. Now, he faces felony wire fraud charges, but chances are he will find some way to evade any serious punishment and go right back to his fraudulent businesses.