Let’s start with this: If you end up giving any money to Billy McFarland to attend whatever “Fyre Fest II” ends up being, there’s a very strong argument to be made that you deserve whatever happens next. Including the very real possibility of that “what” being “nothing,” given that local governments in resort locations are now apparently going out of their way to deny any involvement in a sequel to the mimetically famous debacle.
This is per Stereogum, which notes that the government of Mexico’s Playa del Carmen issued a social media statement on Thursday, flatly denying any involvement in Fyre II, saying that “No event of that name will be held in Playa del Carmen.” This, despite McFarland claiming to have moved the festival there after a previous supposed venue, Isla Mujeres, issued a similar denial, because if there’s one thing McFarland’s business model seems to rely on, it’s the non-existence of the concept of pattern recognition. McFarland then fired back with a post that purported to be a long list of permits and communications that his company has gotten from the PDC government for the alleged Fyre II, and, certainly, those are a large number of words on an Instagram post. We cannot deny that the words have been posted.
Really, it comes down to a question of who you’re going to trust: The government of a small Mexican city with a good reputation for tourism, or a man who was literally sent to prison for fraud for the last festival he organized. There is, honestly, a part of us that can’t help but shamefully admire McFarland’s unceasing hucksterism in the face of petty little things like reality, or the existence of human memory. But, again: If you cannot identify whether he is a good person to give money to, for literally any reason, then the problem is probably occurring in your brain as much as his at this point.
