The only concrete detail of FYRE Fest II so far is the price tag
God help us all, Billy McFarland is doing it again
Aux News Fyre
Almost four years behind bars has apparently taught Billy McFarland nothing. Well, almost nothing. The infamous fraudster and convicted felon’s time away from his startup buddies clearly taught him only how to seize the opportunity to do the funniest possible thing—or in his words, to “make the impossible happen.”
In a new YouTube video, titled (sigh) “Announcing FYRE Festival II,” a completely straight-faced McFarland delivers a line that will undoubtedly find its way into the opening of at least one follow-up documentary: “It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here, and it really all started during the seven-month stint in solitary confinement.” McFarland was allegedly placed in solitary for podcasting in 2020, which again, clearly taught him nothing except how to “write a 50-page plan of how I would take this overall interest and demand in FYRE… how I would find the best partners in the world to allow me to be me, while executing FYRE’s vision to the highest level.”
While McFarland initially announced the resurrection through a series of winky Tweets back in April, his newest, um, progress towards executing that vision is exactly what you’d expect: a website selling $499 tickets to nothing. The location? “The Caribbean.” The date? “Targeted for the end of 2024.” The actual event? As vague as anything has ever been.
Instead of Blink-182, luxury villas, and a private plane, your $499-$7,999 FYRE pass (more on that later) secures your access to the festival, whatever that may be, as well as additional “FYRE Events, Experiences, and Community.” These apparently include “Documentary and Film Screenings,” “Weekend Trips,” and something very ominously titled FYRE fights, which we’re assuming isn’t necessarily a reboot of the OG’s skirmish to secure rickety tents, wet beds, and rolls of toilet paper for the night. (But honestly? This writer’s fingers aren’t not crossed that it is.)
And that wild price range? Prices go up exponentially as pre-sale packages are purchased, kind of like the other major ticket scandal that went down before all of this was announced. Maybe McFarland did learn something after all.
31 Comments
…Who is the person who would pay for this? Like I want a documentary about them and all the choices they made during their life.
it’s gonna be a couple dozen reporters going to report on Fyre Festival and a hundred trust fund kids doing it for the lolz
When this website was reviewing that show “The Dropout” about Elizabeth Holmes, one of the reviews had a caveat about what a good idea Theranos could have been. People have an astonishing ability to believe that a scam is just a good idea poorly executed.
I mean, Theranos IS an amazing idea; the science just isn’t there yet and my not be for a long time. FYRE sounded like useless garbage that was more flash than substance even if it had been pulled off in the end.
Case in point.
Like most scams, it worked because she exaggerated something that is plausible. But what do a bunch of peer-vetted researchers at Stanford know, right?? https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/20/stanford-researchers-theranos-that-works/
Turning lead into gold is a great idea, but the science just isn’t there yet.
We just need one more round of seed funding – two, tops – to get a working Philosopher’s Stone off the ground.
What she wanted to do was scientifically impossible. Meanwhile there’s no reason someone with decent promotion experience couldn’t put together a high-priced Caribbean party. I’ve been trying to find a copy of the investment prospectus from the original debacle. It’s truly unbelievable. Just page after page of pretty photos and psychobabble about the unique experience, opportunity to rub elbows with beautiful and famous people, etc. All lacking the one think any investment memorandum must include – NUMBERS. It was every bit as hair-brained as the overall planning; send us a check and we’ll let you know how it goes.
Honestly… conceptually, Fyre Festival was/is a
winner: luxury music festival on a tropic island with a bunch of IG
models and influencers. If I was a young, sociopathic dipshit with a
shitload of money I’d neither earned nor deserved, I might choose to
blow 500K+ at just such a place. And the Netflix documentary proved that
there’s enough of those people out there for it to work: pretty much
all the festival-goers featured in that doc seemed like they’d stepped
out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel.It
sounded like it might’ve succeeded, if they hadn’t tried to do it in 3
months. And if MacFarland hadn’t, y’know, scammed everyone. But there’s probably someone
out there who could pull this concept off.
I think something a lot of people tend to overlook is that yes, Fyre Festival mainly attracted affluent trust fund kids and mildly successful influencers, but it was priced at a point where working class joe shmoes could save up enough money, or had a big enough line of credit, to go and justify the high cost as a “once in a lifetime” experience. There was a lady who said she spent a lifetime scrimping and saving so she could one day go see the Titanic person – and she managed to go on the Titan submersible before the voyage that imploded.I guess my point being, these assholes always manage to exploit at least some of us plain rubes.
Fair enough – I didn’t realize that, but yeah it sounds like what you and rmlohner say is true.Honestly, my first thought upon hearing this news was ‘Guys let it happen again, it’ll be funny.’ But then I remembered all the Bahamians that got scammed by McFarland as well. Gotta remind myself to see beyond the schadenfreude.
It’s a myth that the festival goers were all trust fund kids. The average ticket price was $1,200, incredibly good for a days-long party in the Carribean with every single amenity covered. But for some reason, every headline added another zero.
It doesn’t have to be impossible to be a scam. It just has to be a scam.
Anyone who pays for this deserves to be ripped off.
Documentary name: “Fyre in the Dumpster: Yes, These People Were THAT Dumb Twice!”
At this point whoever loses their shirt on this didn’t deserve a shirt in the first place.
If the dude’s this desperate to go back to prison, he could just steal a car.
People still give loads of money to Donald goddamn Trump, this guy is a fuckin noob compared to the Great Orange Grifter.
The teaser for the original Fyre Festival featured a beautiful woman, a jetski, and the factioid that Pablo Escobar had once owned the island that the festival was to be held on. It didn’t mention who the heck would actually be, you know, playing music onstage. It seems that not much has chaged over there.
Can I just pay with Doge Coins?
I was coming here to drop the actual quote, but Dubya’s version is so much pithier.
Well, sign me up!!! Is this where I put my debit card number?
Fuck You Rich Egomaniacs.
Fyre Fest II: Fool Me Once…
This time around he should be allowed to keep every dollar he makes off of the idiots who pay him. And the ticket buyers should be put in prison for being the reason guys like this keep coming back.
You know, if we ever want to put people on giant arks and shoot them into space to die like in that Douglas Adams novel, I think “people willing to pay for tickets to Fyre Festival II” is a good selection criteria.
That particular story was about how everyone in society has worth, even someone as low as a telephone sanitizer (you’ll recall that the society died of a disease contracted from a dirty telephone booth), but in this context I’m rethinking the lesson.
Almost four years behind bars has apparently taught Billy McFarland nothing.I could not disagree more. It taught him that while jail is certainly no fun, he can go right back to grifting the second he gets out because people are stupid and will always fall over themselves to give con men money.Give it a few years and he’ll be elected president if he plays his cards right, there’s precedent for that now.
FYRE fest the musical???