If there’s anything that can make or break my summer, it’s scoring tickets to a major music festival. But there’s only so much I’m willing to pay (and am able to spend) to sit in the grass in a flower crown and get lost in the experience that is hearing Kendrick Lamar lyrics live. However, Fyre Festival attendees recently learned it costs a whole lot of money to have a really bad time.
Slate magazine recently published a rundown of the “highly-exclusive event” turned hipster ground zero that Twitter had a field day with this past Friday. The festival was advertised as a pseudo-Coachella with “the best in food, art, music, and adventure” taking place on a private island in the Bahamas. Organized by rapper Ja Rule, the concert boasted names like Tyga, Desiigner, Major Lazer, Pusha T, and Blink-182 as scheduled to perform. Models Bella Hadid, Chanel Iman and Hailey Baldwin even urged their fans through social media to purchase tickets to event which were sold at prices ranging from $1500 to a whopping $12,000. But concert-goers arrived to anything but a good time that included inclement weather, subpar accommodations and reports of violence, theft and even a feral dog or two.
Twitter erupted as attendees posted pictures of their luxury accommodations which more resembled a disaster relief site complete with a “cheese sandwich” gourmet dinner and emergency tents:
The dinner that @fyrefestival promised us was catered by Steven Starr is literally bread, cheese, and salad with dressing. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd
— Tr3vor (@trev4president) April 28, 2017
That's right folks for just $10k, you too can have the "refugee fleeing war torn region" treatment at #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/RqYzGq0Yg5
— 👌🏻Garrett Garner🎺 (@garrettgarner12) April 28, 2017
And of course users were quick to mock the idea of wealthy millennials who would pay such exorbitant prices for such an experience in the first place:
If you spent up to $12k to attend #fyrefestival, you deserve everything you get for attending a festival where Blink-182 was the headliner.
— Mr. Pickles (@AskMrPickles) April 28, 2017
And the rich kids at #fyrefestival will look up shout, "Save us!"
And I will look down and whisper, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
— rebound @ NAH (@tehrebound) April 28, 2017
How many times has "Do you know who I am?" been screamed in the face of a very frustrated and confused Bahamian? #fyrefestival
— Monty Burns, III (@CMontyBurnsIII) April 28, 2017
While reports of hunger, dehydration and social media influencers stranded at the airport and demanding refunds emerged, and jokes featuring Joanne The Scammer ran rampant on Twitter, Fyre Festival released an official statement in an attempt to do some damage control:
“Due to circumstances out of our control, the physical infrastructure was not in place on time and we are unable to fulfill on that vision safely and enjoyably for our guests.”
Even Ja Rule eventually addressed what went wrong…well sort of:
— Ja Rule (@Ruleyork) April 28, 2017
In an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, entrepreneur Billy McFarland who partnered with Ja Rule on the venture blames a bad storm for the festival fail and states that he and other organizers were “a bit naive” and ignored red flags that were present since the event’s creation:
“The Exumas didn’t have a really great infrastructure – there wasn’t a great way to get guests in here — we were a little bit ambitious. There wasn’t water or sewage. It was almost like we tried building a city out of nothing and it took almost all of our personal resources to make this happen, and everything we had, to make this festival go on. We thought we were ready and built two different festival sites.”
“We were on a rush job to fix everything and guests were arriving and that caused check-in to be delayed. We were overwhelmed and just didn’t have the foresight to solve all these problems.”
On Saturday organizers of the event posted an additional statement that promised all attendees would be refunded their money and invited back next year:
“All festival goers this year will be refunded in full. We will be working on refunds over the next few days and will be in touch directly with guests with more details.”
“Also, all guests from this year will have free VIP passes to next year’s festival.”
I’ll pass. Fyre Festival seems a little too “lit” for my taste. If anything, I will never, ever complain about shelling out $100 to see Lauryn Hill show up four hours late to a concert again.
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