In these dark hours, when nuclear winter is just one temper tantrum over a missing Cola-Cola can away, the citizens of the world needed an escape. The lucky ones got on planes to the Bahamas, excited for one of the most posh music festivals ever created; the luckier ones got to stay at home, then point and laugh once the former got stuck in their private Caribbean hellscape.
The Fyre Festival was sold as an exclusive getaway featuring performances by Tyga, Pusha T, and Migos, and Blink 182, among others. Guests would stay in luxury lodges or glamping tents, dine on cuisine from world-famous chefs, and dabble in beachy activities like swimming with piglets. Models including Emily Ratajkowski and several Victoria's Secret Angels pimped the two-weekend event on their Instagrams. Tickets cost $1,200 to $250,000 (for a group package).
Dispatches from the ensuing disaster read straight from Revelation 21:8. Guests began tweeting Thursday night about the musicians (canceled), the accommodations (FEMA relief tents), the medical assistance (absent), the manner of handling luggage (throwing it out of a truck onto the sand in the dark), the dogs (feral), and the food (slices of bread and cheese). Who is responsible for all this?
Well, Ja Rule was the celebrity face, but with all due respect to the "Always on Time" rapper, he was likely just a mere figurehead. "I truly apologize as this is NOT MY FAULT," he tweeted, which is an appropriate response to any and all events in 2017.
So who's really to blame? Well, Ja Rule's partner in this festival is Billy McFarland. The event is an extension of their startup, Fyre, an talent-booking marketplace that promises a "seamless and transparent" experience.
Though he's only 25 years old, McFarland oversees several companies of his own design. There is Spling, a "digital customer acquisition" company, and of course Magnises, his magnum opus (until now).
Magnises began as a credit card for special events in New York City. For an annual fee of $250, users were promised assistance with buying concert tickets, getting restaurant reservations, and drinking free cocktails. McFarland earned himself a withering write-up in the New York Post in 2014: "Olympic hopefuls, scenester DJs, tech innovators, and socialites like Nick Loeb (Sofia Vergara's ex-fiancé) are among the 1,200 or so chosen ones who don't leave home without it."
When asked the significance of his company's name, McFarland said it was Latin for nothing. "The name is made up, but it sounds grand, doesn't it?"
The credit-card company has since pivoted to a concierge app, a sort of digital party planner for the affluent. But the cool kids were already fed up with McFarland back in January, according to Business Insider. The site spoke to a handful of Magnises' 40,000 members and found that they had each experienced technical difficulties or scheduling snafus with the app, with screw-ups or mistakes around tickets to Hamilton and Beyoncé.
"We need to figure out a better relationship so that we can get to what we promised," McFarland told Business Insider at the time. "We're having growing pains and it's tough, and we have to get through it." Esquire.com has reached out to McFarland for comment on the Fyre Festival.
It seems McFarland, an impressive cosplay of Jean-Ralphio Saperstein from Parks and Recreation, has aimed for the cool-kid crowd since he was in elementary school. After the Fyre Festival, his most public failure to date, it'll be interesting to see what his next venture might be. That said, it is tough to imagine hundreds of people writing four-figure checks to McFarland and a rapper who peaked in 1999, but here we are.
Kaitlin Menza is a freelance features writer. She lives in New York. You can see more of her writing at kaitlinmenza.com.
