Fyre Festival
On the morning of April 27th, 2017, flights carrying roughly 500 people from Miami began landing on the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas for what was promised to be the most luxurious and exclusive musical festival ever produced. The event, named Fyre Festival by entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper/celebrity Ja Rule, was a marketing promotion for the Fyre App, an application created to hire talent for social events. While initially an exciting idea promoted by numerous supermodels and other social media influencers, planning for the music festival was quickly plagued by logistical hurdles, beginning when McFarland and Ja Rule lost the lease on the original location when they violated an agreement made with the island’s owners. With four months left to organize the festival, McFarland and his team pushed forward, piecing together what would become an infamous disaster as every aspect of the festival quickly broke down, leaving the attendees stuck on a remote part of the island without a way off. How does marketing in the digital age interact with our psycho/social programming? Who are “con men” and how do they use our basic psychology against us? How did this fiasco reinforce common stereotypes about the psychology of the Millennial generation?