At least in terms of schadenfreude, the fallout from 2017's Fyre Festival debacle has been far more entertaining than any music festival could ever hope to be. Not only were a bunch of rich kids conned out of the Blink-182 and Migos-backed Caribbean bacchanal they were promised, but co-founders Ja Rule and Billy…
Nine months after being arrested on charges related to the flaming Caribbean clusterfuck that united the world in spiteful laughter last spring—4/28/17, never forget—Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland has pled guilty to two counts of wire fraud, as NPR reports. Fyre Festival was supposed to be a luxury weekend…
The Fyre Festival debacle was a bizarrely entertaining debacle that helped distract this country from the far more horrifying debacle happening in the White House, with the luxury-focused music festival in the Bahamas collapsing into anarchy once it became clear that practically no aspect of it had actually been…
Like a boy who flew too close to the sun while wearing an Izod polo shirt, the collapse of the Fyre Festival will live on in myth, a symbol of upscale outdoor-concert hubris laid low by ignorance and, um, wire fraud. The aborted festival, which stranded hundreds of wealthy idiots in a mosquito-ridden wasteland of Mad…
Fyre Festival is likely to go down as one of the great boondoggles in music fest history, stranding a bunch of upwardly mobile party goers in their own private, wristband-powered version of the Hunger Games. But while organizer Ja Rule—and especially his co-founder, recently arrested New York entrepreneur Billy…
Pitchfork reports that Billy McFarland—who, alongside rapper Ja Rule, was one of the architects of the Caribbean clusterfuck known as Fyre Festival—has been arrested by the FBI on charges of wire fraud. A U.S. attorney issued a statement today, saying that “McFarland allegedly presented fake documents to induce…
Everybody loves concert merch that specifically lists tour dates or whatever, because it’s an easy way of letting other people know about a cool thing that they got to experience. As impressive as a cheap t-shirt from a legendary concert is, though, it’s nothing compared to a cheap t-shirt from an infamously terrible…
The Fyre Festival was cancelled amidst considerable chaos about a month ago, to the dismay of the 8,000 people who purchased tickets for the purported luxury experience. But every new detail that emerges about the ultimate non-event is increasingly more disturbing. Now, The New York Times reports that the FBI has…
People have been using words like “pitiful” to describe Ja Rule and Billy McFarland’s Fyre Festival for a few weeks now, ever since it started making the bad kind of headlines in droves. Now, though, the widely reported debacle is finally starting to evoke some actual, useful pity for its participants. Consequence Of…
Despite assurances from co-founder Billy McFarland that everything will be fine as long as the employees are okay with not being paid and and they forward all messages from the FBI to the company’s lawyers, things still aren’t looking good for the Fyre Festival. McFarland and fellow co-founder Ja Rule are facing …
Though the scope and horror isn’t quite as massive, the continued slow-motion collapse of the Fyre Festival is starting to look more and more like the massive trainwreck that is the Trump administration. Just yesterday, we reported that a new lawsuit was accusing festival organizers Ja Rule and Billy McFarland of…
Ja Rule’s Fyre Festival continues to be the hot new lawsuit destination of the season; the island event—which managed to strand a bunch of hard-partying Blink-182 fans in a Caribbean tent city, where pre-loaded wristbands were no longer respected as currency, and survival of the fleekest was thoroughly in place—has…
Actually attending the disastrous Fyre Festival sounds like it was a miserable experience, but making fun of the Fyre Festival on Twitter has been the sort of harmless fun that everyone can enjoy. Apparently, though, the organizers running—or “running”—the fest didn’t think it was so harmless. As reported by Pitchfork…
Ja Rule’s Fyre Festival is quickly becoming the “Ja Rule’s Fyre Festival”—i.e., a haphazard, hastily assembled clusterfuck—of consumer litigation, with Vulture reporting that the much-maligned music festival is now facing its third lawsuit in a week. Previous suits against the festival—which stranded a bunch of…
Whether Fyre Festival—the three-day musical festival in the Bahamas that was pitched as a luxury playground for the rich and easily influenced but ended up more like a rusty jungle gym—was a success or not depends on whether you believe in the concept of “bad press.” On the one hand, a lot more people know what Fyre…
The Fyre Festival may now be but wisps of black, billowing smoke destined to float through years of prolonged, multi-million dollar lawsuits, but let us not forget the old adage that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat another day of damp mattresses, cheese sandwiches, feral dogs, and air not…
The Fyre Festival fiasco is now mostly embers, co-founder Ja Rule claims, as whatever poor, rich souls that remained on the island with cheese sandwiches through the weekend have now been returned to their typically well-appointed environs. The Pain Is Love rapper has repeatedly insisted the whole thing was “NOT A SCAM
Seth Rogen and The Lonely Island have been working together on a film that has now been retroactively ripped from the internet headlines, apparently, courtesy of this weekend’s disastrous Fyre Fest. Per The Hollywood Reporter, both Rogen and the comedy musical group tweeted out last night that they’ve been working for…
The first weekend of Ja Rule’s Fyre Festival has not been what most people would consider an unqualified success. (Marketing tip: You usually don’t want Lord Of The Flies or The Hunger Games referenced quite so heavily in press coverage of your island getaway destination.) A number of would-be partygoers are stranded…
As we speak, wealthy wannabes with cash to burn are being subjected to the horrors of folding chairs and plain cheese sandwiches at Fyre Festival. Pitched as an upscale experience in the Bahamas full of yachts and hot models in bikinis, guests—who paid between $1,000 to $12,000 for tickets alone, and up to $250,000…