fyre festival is going well

I mean, what's your defense in the next interview? "Well, I thought this startup that was creating an app for rich people was a scam." Many (most?) are, to some extent, scams. Uber's net income was something like negative $750M for 2018. And McFarland had a shitload of good press up to and including the month the festival bombed

Now, "I quit because it was a well-publicized disaster owned by a federal criminal" is a little more of a sell

random pondering: are Manhattan-based scams of a distinct flavor compared to other scams? something seems very social-climbing in a particular way about the whole townhouse/card thing

I'd also echo kitchen person's sentiment about the Hulu doc showing a lot more of the actual sales pitch compared to the Netflix one, probably because they kept adding more shit to upsell prospective attendees and no one at jerry media wanted to hand over the in-office footage of them saying "ok, we have to add something about a pirate ship to the website.."

FWIW, we watched the Netflix one with our 14-year old daughter as a lesson in why she should not trust everything she sees on Instagram, and esp. the perniciousness of sponsored posts, celebrity endorsements and "influencers." She seemed quite aware of the situation, which kinda troubles me. It's just the way things are for her and her friends, but I don't know what to make of that sort of transcendental cynicism.

"You seem sane, why the fuck were you working for that cretin in the first place?"

In fairness, ridiculous hubristic techbro manbabies are par for the course in her industry.

There were a lot of people in the Netflix one that should have known better and did have us asking why they continued to be involved with Billy even up to the day of the festival.

This was so completely baffling to me. There were people Billy would task with fixing a major (and completely avoidable) problem, and they'd shrug, "Welp, how much crazier can it get?"

Like the Evian situation. Why on earth wasn't Andy King's immediate reaction, "You want me to WHAT?! Nope, we're done here, go fuck yourself" ?

Had to lol at King's "Nobody remembers the mud and the traffic and the lack of food and sanitation at Woodstock!" Yes they do. That's like 1/4th of the fucking movie. Shots of stranded cars are longer than the Santana drum solo, ffs.

My daughter had never heard of Woodstock!

damn, I guess Fred Durst died in vain

This was so completely baffling to me. There were people Billy would task with fixing a major (and completely avoidable) problem, and they'd shrug, "Welp, how much crazier can it get?"

here is an important thing to know about con artists imo - the definition of a mark is not a well-meaning person that gets conned by the con artist due to ignorance, happenstance, etc. Con artists target marks who are greedy enough to think they can outsmart the con artist. The ideal mark is the one who thinks *they* are the con artists, that they will somehow come out on top of the con, that they are the ones who actually have the inside track on the scam. And that is exactly what all these people working for McFarland and all the attendees were - they were thinking, deep down, that somehow *they* would come out ahead if they could just fool everybody else long enough to getting some free, expensive shit and "be legends". I hated absolutely everybody in the Netflix doc except for the hapless Bahamaian laborers, who were just doing what they always have to do to survive, which is hustle to get some scraps from rich white assholes.

Had to lol at King's "Nobody remembers the mud and the traffic and the lack of food and sanitation at Woodstock!" Yes they do. That's like 1/4th of the fucking movie. Shots of stranded cars are longer than the Santana drum solo, ffs.

also lol yeah this was my immediate reaction as well

xp

at least the Bahamaian catering woman is apparently taking in some cash from a GoFundMe, I felt so shitty for her situation

Like the Evian situation. Why on earth wasn't Andy King's immediate reaction, "You want me to WHAT?! Nope, we're done here, go fuck yourself" ?

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat),

Right! All through the documentary I kept expecting a moment where Andy would say, "I told Billy to go fuck himself" but it never came. His reaction to the Evian request was when it became obvious just how much Billy had some kind of weird control over him or something. The same way he has over a lot of people I guess?

he also said (sounding quite sincere) that he hopes he doesn't go to jail at some point

definitely seems to have affection for him still

Haha yeah that's so true about Woodstock, and it's all anyone ever talks about re Glastonbury, the mud is the single most famous thing about it.

here is an important thing to know about con artists imo - the definition of a mark is not a well-meaning person that gets conned by the con artist due to ignorance, happenstance, etc. Con artists target marks who are greedy enough to think they can outsmart the con artist. The ideal mark is the one who thinks *they* are the con artists, that they will somehow come out on top of the con, that they are the ones who actually have the inside track on the scam. And that is exactly what all these people working for McFarland and all the attendees were - they were thinking, deep down, that somehow *they* would come out ahead if they could just fool everybody else long enough to getting some free, expensive shit and "be legends".

Makes sense. I can't think of any other reason any of these schmucks kept saying "yes" to Billy.

Like w/that yogi event-planner dude... when he recounted writing his stern email about how seriously dire the situation was, and just got the reply, "At least they'll see your smiling face!" -- I thought for sure he'd say, "And that's when I quit." But it turned out his reaction was basically to shrug and go, "Guess this thing is f'd, and I'm along for the ride..."?

Like even just from a standpoint of these people's own professional reputations, why wouldn't they cut their losses?

His reaction to the Evian request was when it became obvious just how much Billy had some kind of weird control over him or something. The same way he has over a lot of people I guess?

I mean, at some point prior to getting involved in Fyre King evidently thought, "Magnises was not completely stupid and shitty," so he was apparently susceptible to being convinced that bad ideas are not in fact bad ideas.

greed explains every single one of these morons' actions

bad ideas that reap millions of dollars are not bad ideas when you're an amoral greedhound

like you can bet that every time one of these shitbags witnessed Billy make some completely ludicrous claim or prognostication, they all thought to themselves "well, he's rich, so on some level he must be right!"

"and if I can only figure out what that level is, *I* will be rich too!"

my take was that Andy is a guy who has done what it takes to make things happen and this seemed like a more dire situation that he was used to, but he's seen and done some shit and by god we've got to get the water to the campsite

I can’t stop laughing at this:

http://i63.tinypic.com/ngom8p.jpg

Heh, reminds me of the Mr Show law firm interview sketch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTRBUnjAgq8

it really says something that we're floating over the part where they bought really expensive water that resulted in a $175K customs bill... for water

also floating over the part where this guy thought he could *give a blowjob that was worth $175k*

I just went online to a currency converter, and $175K in Bahamian dollars is currently worth ... $175K in US dollars.

are Manhattan-based scams of a distinct flavor compared to other scams?

guys the $175K goes to the *government*, the blowjob goes to the customs agent who forgets to charge you and doesn't tell the government about your evian

Did you know that Evian is Naive spelled backwards? I learned that from Elon Musk, the Billy of the tech industry.

Musk's pitch is basically variations of Fyre Festival ... in Space!

if I could hand Billy some money and received a working music festival that was overbilled but only *might* catch fire, maybe

i almost just linked to a billy but then thought better of it, feel free to ilxmail if you're super curious

xpost the naive/evian thing was also in the movie Reality Bites.

I'm going to make a third Fyre doc called Reality Bites ... You in the ASS!

This all makes me wonder when we're going to get the tell-all ATP doc, the final word on the UK's own lo-fi Ponzi scheme festival.

The feeling I get from most of the Netflix doc’s talking heads is that they think that the clarity of their hindsight somehow absolves them. you don’t get a lot of insight into their actions so I’m a little skeptical of their framing of themselves vs Billy etc . idk

they got him the clicks. the rest was up to him

just watched the Netflix one.

all I can say is

"that's not fraud! that's not fraud! That's...I would say...false advertising".

I remember when I was working for a firm that was designing and opening all the 4m3rican 4pparel stores. AA had no money. They kept thinking that opening new stores would somehow create the cashflow they needed and save them. Every single week we would be on a call with corporate about who to pay first based on who was threatening to sue or place a lien. It was ridiculous. AA had apartments in certain cities for all the photogenic salespeople that were favorites to crash at and hang out. It was the worst environment I have ever worked in. I could not get someone from AA to show up before 5pm. And all these poor local contractors and suppliers who thought they landed this big contract who were providing things for free with expected payment 2-4 weeks out. Shit just gets out of control because you expect most people know what the fuck they are doing.

I lasted 5 months. It was insanity.

It bothers me that they keep saying Billy was very charismatic and convincing when everyone involved was simply blinded by greed.

This all makes me wonder when we're going to get the tell-all ATP doc, the final word on the UK's own lo-fi Ponzi scheme festival.

and let's not forget the other UK based entitled generation festival story :

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/festival-fraud-aristocrat-still-paying-355k-back-to-parents-a3591381.html

went to one of the earlier ones before the fraud was revealed.
we were the only people (with kids no less!) drinking beer, the bar was mainly stocked with bottles champagne.

Come on guys, this is clearly the UK analogue: http://www.grubstreet.com/2017/08/cheese-festival-disaster.html

Some justice. And a kicker of a final paragraph.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/world/americas/maryann-rolle-fyre-festival-gofundme.html

As in new Gawker

Of course this photo of Gawker's editorial director with Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland exists. Of course it does. pic.twitter.com/Bn8PFfF5LC

— Kim Bhasin (@KimBhasin) January 23, 2019

And if you want an update on that person:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gawker-writers-quit-over-editorial-director-carson-griffiths-offensive-tweets-workplace-comments

fyre media is going well

It bothers me that they keep saying Billy was very charismatic and convincing when everyone involved was simply blinded by greed.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, 23 January 2019 03:23 (fourteen hours ago) Permalink

When will the NYT stop calling McFarland an entrepreneur and start calling him “convicted scam artist” or “jailed con man”?