Whether you watched it on Hulu, viewed the Netflix version, or just heard people talking about it, the Fyre Festival scam has re-entered our mainstream culture.
The tweet that pushed this scam into the spotlight was posted in April 2017. The infamous picture was taken by an attendee to the festival, displaying his "dinner."
The dinner that @fyrefestival promised us was catered by Steven Starr is literally bread, cheese, and salad with dr… https://t.co/GjBxQygxV9— Trevor DeHaas (@Trevor DeHaas) 1493344843.0
Immediately, this blew up all over social media. Memes began circulating mocking the wealthy festival goers, implying that they were scammed but also high maintenance. Most of the conversation didn't leave that sphere, and to most, it seemed that only the attendees were scammed for thousands of dollars.
However, as made clear and more widely known by the recent documentaries, there was a much larger and sinister impact of the festival.
The corruption and scamming came from the top, with the employees of the company and local laborers getting scammed for their time, work, and promised pay. For the employees of Fyre, a company that developed an app for revolutionizing the booking industry, they were kept entirely out of the loop for the operations of the festival. The Fyre Festival was supposed to be a promotional event to launch their new app, and they trusted Billy MacFarland under the advice of reputable people to head this project.
Stating that the employees' trust was abused would be an understatement. I will not be spoiling any insane stories from the films, but I will be talking about the forgotten and overlooked the impact on the lives of many.
Many of these employees were fresh out of school, taking on entrepreneurial risks to pursue an idea that they believed in. And they worked tirelessly to craft the program, only to have their reputation shattered due to MacFarland's tyranny in the festival setup.
But those who had the worst end of the stick? The local Bahamans.
The documentary includes an interview of a Bahaman restaurant owner, Maryann Rolle, that was bombarded with unannounced guests, thanks to, you guessed it, Billy. Not only did her employees work tirelessly to cater to the immense wave of party goer's, but many of them also did not get paid by Fyre. She is said to be owed $134,000 by the festival organizers for catering and housing the festival crew.
So what did she do? She used $50,000 from her own emergency savings to pay her workers, which was the responsibility of Fyre to do so through the work contract.
For many before the release of this documentary, the catastrophe started and stopped with the wealthy people who were scammed for their money. It is not that they deserved that outcome; no one does. However, social media created a tunnel vision for everyone to view only the hurt felt by the rich people involved, and the documentaries are a wake-up call to the harsh reality.
