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My Thoughts On BOTH #Fyre Documentaries

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So, unless you have been under a rock, your social media timeline must be full of Fyre hashtags. If you are fully nestled under your rock, you might not even be aware what Fyre is which would mean you missed the social media frenzy about its failure last year. Don’t worry, I am here to keep you in the loop and give you enough to participate at the water cooler conversation.

Fyre Festival was a two-weekend music event intended as a promotional boost for the Fyre Media app, which was basically an app that would help you book celebs for events directly, skipping a middle man. This already sounds questionable, because I would assume only D-list celebs would do this but A-list celebs were who were being touted. This grand festival idea was founded by Billy McFarland and his partner, “rapper” Ja Rule. It was to be a luxurious event on the Exuma island in the Bahamas. The summary is Billy was fraudulent, scamming investors and forging documents to get more money. Leading to a mess of a non event and the poor locals not being paid for all their hard work.

Okay, so these docs have been in the works for a while and Netflix had announced theirs, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened was dropping in January and then Hulu decided to be “shady” and dropped theirs, Fyre Fraud two days before Netflix. I watched both so you don’t have to, so here’s what I thought.

FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED (NETFLIX)

FYRE FRAUD (HULU)

Billy’s new look

The saddest part were the Bahamian locals who worked their asses off and didn’t get paid. For the Netflix doc, a lot of the ex-employees kept saying they knew it wouldn’t work and yet they kept on trucking. This makes it hard to believe that they are not in part to blame for this. So,while they are condemning him now, they have to accept that they played their part also. There is more to unpack with these docs though, how did we as a society get to the point of being influenced so much to the point of a severe case of blind spots. Why do we aim to reach some status  level and in some way, approval of people we don’t even know?

McFarland had already failed and duped people with an earlier company, Magnises and yet people trusted him with their money. My big old question with both docs is how noone fully addressed why Ja Rule is not getting any flack, he was in every single frame (and step) of the whole project but McFarland is basically who took the brunt for the whole thing. In fact, in the Hulu doc he refused to say anything negative about Ja Rule.

Overall, I enjoyed both docs. Both docs, give us insight into this hot mess that most knew would not happen and for some reason, kept going. I can’t help but wonder how alleged smart people keep getting duped by young, white “entrepreneurs”. This is pretty much the definition of “white privilege”. I don’t think McFarland has learned his lesson. I fully expect to see another doc on his escapades in another 10 years.

If you only want to see one of them, I’d say go for the Netflix one.

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