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FYRE Festival 2017

Maddy McCarthy
6 min readNov 2, 2020

by: Maddy McCarthy

Take a moment to imagine this scenario. You and your friends hear about a new, exclusive music festival coming up in the Bahamas. Your favorite influencers all swear they’re going. Some of the hottest talents in music are scheduled to perform and you’re told tickets are limited. The tickets seem pricey but include your private flight, luxury housing and professional chef crafted meals for the weekend. All this seems too good to be true, so you and your friends gather your savings and buy tickets to embark on this amazing tropical weekend. A dream come true, right? That is what hundreds of people had thought as they bought tickets to the event, Fyre Festival in 2017. We know now, the outcome was much different than anyone could have imagined. I believe Fyre Festival is one of the best examples of the powers of harmful propaganda through social media within the past five years. As young adults ourselves, I thought this topic would be particularly interesting to analyze being that so many of us are influenced by propaganda on social media everyday.

For those who don’t know, Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival scheduled to be held in the Bahamas in 2017. Due to poor management skills and more ambition in the company than money, the once “luxury” festival resulted in one night stay in disaster relief tents on a rocky parking lot with no music and little food and water. Guests who paid thousands of dollars for celebrity-like treatment received nothing of what they were promised. This was all the result of what can happen when harmful propaganda persuades people to do what companies want, rather than what is actually safe.

In many ways, it is exciting that social media has the power to connect us with celebrities. However, this connection can be dangerous when situations such as Fyre Festival occur. There were various red flags in the weeks leading up to the festival where guests should have been concerned about the status of the event and even contemplated their attendance. However, I do not believe that guests can be blamed at all in this scenario. Some of the blame however, can be put into the hands of celebrities who promoted the event. Influencers who were paid to promote the event did so with little thought and continued to have the public believe they would be in attendance at the festival after they likely decided to not go. Therefore, I believe influencers should be held accountable for their actions.

The most harmful propaganda out there is some that persuades people to do something that puts their lives at risk. This event did not result in any deaths or injuries, but it very well could have. The location in the Bahamas had very little security and resources available for the attendees. If there was an emergency, it is impossible to know what could have happened in such an ill-equipped scenario. Fyre Festival was able to convince hundreds of people that for enough money, they could live out their celebrity fantasy. This shows that people, specifically young adults, will do almost anything to impress others and have exclusive experiences.

I enjoyed creating this project because I was able to further analyze a topic I have been previously interested in. I originally heard of the event in late 2017 and watched the documentaries on Netflix and Hulu when they came out. I vaguely remember Kendall Jenner posting about the event on my own Instagram in 2017. Overall, creating Leap 2 gave me the opportunity to better comprehend more recent examples of harmful propaganda. I find that I now have a better understanding of harmful propaganda and can continue to look out for it in my own life.

Script:

Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival founded by Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc, and rapper/ cofounder Ja Rule. The fyre festival was announced in January 2017 and promised 2 weekends of 3 day 2 night stays on the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas. This event however turned into a nightmare situation as attendees were stranded with half-built huts to sleep in and cold cheese sandwiches to eat. Instead of cancelling the event when the company knew they were out of money, the event remained on but instead of luxury, it was the complete opposite. This resulted in million dollar lawsuits against CEO Mcfarland fraudulent advertising, stealing from investors and public endangerment. McFarland is now serving a 6 year sentence for his wrong doings.

How is this harmful?

As you can see here there were several, influencers and celebrities with a total of 300 million followers on Instagram who were gathered and paid generously by the company in order to post promotions for the Fyre Festival. This is also the set list of musicians that were supposed to be present to perform at the festival as well. These are all examples of harmful propaganda in that each of these influencers and musicians made the decision to no longer attend the event without telling the public. Very few, of all these names, actually posted that they will no longer be attending the festival due to concerns about the conditions on the island. As an influencer, you have the power to persuade people very heavily, so to say you will be somewhere and change your mind when you no longer think it’s safe, can be very dangerous for others.

Why should we care?

In terms of dangerous propaganda this is a perfect example of how people will quite literally risk their lives to have an experience just because an influencer tell them to.

Memes had played a big role in the media directly after the event had taken place. The event remained in the news for a while after the disaster because of how poorly the company handled the entire situation as well as CEO Billy McFarlands reaction. After McFarland was sentenced to 6 years in prison the story has seemed to be put to bed. However, documentaires I acknowledged earlier keep the story alive.

As students studying propaganda it is easy to say “oh those kids were just stupid” “they just had money to spare” which is what alot of the public said about the guests. But, as a young adult in today’s society that is so influenced by social media, I think it is important to think about this event personally. It was so easy for this company to just pay influencers and create an appealing social media page in order to make millions of dollars off people. We have become so easily manipulated and so trusting in influencers that really don’t have to be truthful for the right price.

Works Cited:

Fyre Festival
Fyre Fraud
Fyre
Propaganda
Com416

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Maddy McCarthy

Written by Maddy McCarthy

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