Fyre Festival was all that’s wrong with Instagram

It’s easy to laugh at the vacuous Instagram generation who fell for the fake promises of the Fyre Festival, writes Cameron Adams. But spare some sympathy for the innocent workers who got burned.

If you want to see Instagram unfiltered, try Netflix’s Fyre Festival documentary.

Fyre was the 2017 boutique music festival that promised a selfie-ready party with models and influencers on a remote island in the Bahamas that you’d paid a small fortune to attend, thus keeping the plebs out.

The reality was less private chefs, swanky villas and chartered jets than cheese sandwiches, disaster relief tents with wet mattresses and, gulp, economy flights. The festival was cancelled and smug millennial promoter Billy McFarland is now in jail for six years for wire fraud.

On one hand it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for a bunch of rich brats, or trustafarians, who’d stumped up tens of thousands of dollars to see an event where Blink 182 was one of the headline acts and one of the festival founders was rapper Ja Rule who hasn’t had a hit in 15 years and wasn’t long out of jail for gun possession and tax evasion.

RELATED: Fyre Fest staffer ordered to offer oral sex to customs agent

Fyre were trying to tap into the VIP set who’ve poisoned music festivals like Coachella, making it more about social media influencers, selfies, celebrities and hanging backstage in luxury villas taking photos and promoting brands than actually watching any music.

McFarland promoted Fyre through Instagram identities like Bella Hadid, Hayley Bieber and Kendall Jenner (who later turned to pushing laxative tea on teenage girls).

And once it all started going wrong Fyre “organisers” started deleting any questions, concerns or criticism from their social media outlets and blocking those who made such comments, while still selling tickets for the doomed event.

Fyre Festival organisers used models and “influencers” like Bella Hadid to sell tickets to an event that was doomed from the start.

There are definite schadenfreude moments in the doco as you watch the cashed-up Grammers realise there’s nothing to take selfies in front of and they’ve been sold a lie. Some coughed up over $10,000 for private villas that literally did not exist.

Because we live in a ‘picture or it didn’t happen’ world, the entire thing was documented. Unfortunately for Fyre, no filter could fix the hot mess all the phones were transmitting to social media as their policy of luring influencers backfired on them.

It was hard to feel too much pity for the one influencer who did manage to get a villa (which she took selfies in) and says she “felt bad” about sleeping under a roof while others were in emergency tents leftover from use during hurricanes.

RELATED: Ja Rule claims he was victim in Fyre Festival debacle too

But there should be a lot of sympathy for the staff on the island who were ripped off blind by Fyre Festival organisers and their criminal disorganisation. They exploited their good will and labour and kept trying to put on an event despite knowing it was always going to be a disaster.

A Go Fund Me page for Maryann Rolle, a restaurant owner and event caterer who spent her $75,000 life savings to pay her workers when the Fyre Festival crew didn’t, has now raised over $150,000.

The documentary reveals the stark reality of the fantasy world Instagram has built and monetised. The app allows users to curate their own illusion, even if that is themselves as a brand, a heightened life they can literally filter and airbrush as they wish.

Organiser Billy McFarland (right) is now in jail over the event, and his partner Ja Rule is claiming he is also a victim of the scam. Picture: Netflix’s Fyre

Radio stations in 2019 now run ads for lip fillers designed for ‘the perfect selfie pout’. Go to any beach, concert or public space and you’ll see personal photo shoots with people more concerned about getting the perfect selfie than how they’ll look to anyone around them. Or if they’re blocking the view of anyone around them.

Last year at Sydney’s Icebergs restaurant (total ‘Gram bait, over Bondi Beach) I witnessed two young women walk in, ask to borrow a stranger’s Aperol Spritz (that orange Insta-friendly drink), walk out onto the balcony and spend ten minutes taking selfies with it before returning it, with melted ice. #truestory #doingitforthegram

The Netflix Fyre doco even points out a new business where people can pay to take photos inside a luxury plane. They don’t go anywhere, just sit inside and get photos they can post as if they’re travelling private jet somewhere. We’ve devolved to the point where that has become a business. What next? Borrowing someone’s dog for a photo and pretending it’s yours?

Honesty doesn’t matter anymore. Celebrities are claiming their bodies are natural and the people who follow them spend tens of thousands surgically replicating them. People genuinely validate themselves by how many likes a post gets.

At least there is some kind of self-policing on social media, which Fyre Festival demonstrated.

The dinner that @fyrefestival promised us was catered by Steven Starr is literally bread, cheese, and salad with dressing. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd

— Trevor DeHaas (@trev4president) April 28, 2017

The event was launched and promoted through social media, through branded posts selling a daydream (and a nightdream) and was effectively killed off by someone posting a photo of a miserable cheese sandwich on Twitter, miles away from the ‘luxury food’ offered, that went global and launched a million jokes — at their expense.

Those influencers seem to have not been burned by Fyre. Even though Ja Rule is now using Twitter to try and extricate himself from the mess now it’s the subject of two documentaries — Netflix’s and Hulu’s (who paid McFarland for a sit down interview, where he protects Ja Rule’s involvement).

They’re lucky nobody died, except their reputation.

At least it’s got Ja Rule trending on Twitter again.

Cameron Adams is a News Corp music writer.

@cameron_adams