This 2019 Netflix document is an entertaining, alarming look into the early days of social media influence on corporate capitalism.
The Fyre music festival was an attempt at a luxurious event in the Bahamas for society’s elite, it was marketed that way and pretty quickly devolved into a total shambles with huge debts and a prison sentence. Hurray? Huzzah!
You Don’t Have the Right to Party at Fyre Festival
Pretty much everyone you meet in the documentary early on is intolerably arrogant, rich, and very, very loud. So annoying, entitled, and out of touch with real life that we almost abandoned the whole film.
But it’s worth sticking around to see the mess that developed, as this is the classic example of swashbuckling arrogance not comprehending logistics.
That and how capitalism is the perfect playground for people with sociopathy/psychopathy (antisocial personality disorder), and narcissistic personality disorder—where deceit and manipulation are the desired personality traits.
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened isn’t really about a failed festival, it’s about American businessman and entrepreneur Billy McFarland. At the start of Fyre we’re informed by various individuals he’s an “amazing” entrepreneur, is very rich, and achieved this through HARD WORK and innovation.
That wealth apparently came from founding Magnises (now defunct), a credit card membership club with fancy cards made from steel. This was targeting at rich kid Millennials and did pretty well.
McFarland promptly pretended to be a millionaire and lived a lavish lifestyle, owning various boats, and going everywhere with a cocksure confidence and ready smile.
It later turns out he only made around $60,000 from his company and bullshitted his way through everything else, incurring huge debts, lying to investors, and all that jazz. This is basically another Elizabeth Holmes story—a “charismatic” psychopath/sociopath putting on the whole extroverted business owner front to get the status they so desperately crave.
It’s his relentless lies that fuel this story, with Fyre invented with McFarland’s friend Ja Rule (a rapper). They want a big party on a beautiful island in the Bahamas with people staying in 5-star quality tents on the beach at $100,000 for the event etc.
Prestige stuff, then, and to get the ball rolling in 2016 they enlisted some models, did a photoshoot on the island, and started trying to organise the event.
This is the vomit-inducing original marketing campaign they used.
Different opinions and all that, but lots of people saw this back in 2016 and thought it looked the best thing humanly imaginable, rather than an event for sad acts with more money than sense.
What Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened then documents is the harsh reality check—holding a music festival on an island paradise sounds like a great idea, but ignores the intense logistical nightmare it presents.
One employee tried to demonstrate this early on to McFarland by:
- Spending a night on the beach and finding it intolerable due to heat and mosquitoes
- Explaining how many portable toilets would be needed on the island (thousands)
McFarland doesn’t want to face this reality and promptly sacked the guy, ploughing on with fanciful ideas, changing island multiple times, somehow sourcing money from investors out of the blue, and denying that with each passing day the festival was becoming less luxurious.
If you don’t know what sociopathy/psychopathy are, you’ll watch on baffled as to why McFarland digs himself into an ever-enormous hole.
How he’s incapable of seeing if he doesn’t abandon the project, it’ll be an ever-increasing disaster.
This launched in 2019, but reminds us of the 2025 Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster. One overprivileged, arrogant, quite delusional CEO/director convinced he can do no wrong leading a project into oblivion.
Watching the documentary highlights everything wrong with the oligarchy that capitalism has deformed into. And this was even back in 2016! It’s these rich people hurling an obscene amount of money at a festival for other rich people, for an event that didn’t need to happen.
The mess and fallout was astonishing—he was sued for a piffling $100 million in a class-action lawsuit. This did result in prison time for McFarland, all of which adds a heaping dollop of satisfaction for the viewer as it’s thoroughly well deserved.
Watch the documentary to see the gave get a harsh reality check.
However, the sad reality of all this is sociopaths will be sociopaths—delusional to the last. McFarland was released early from prison after serving less than four years of his six-year sentence.
Has he taken anything from the experience? Was it a profound teachable moment from which he emerged a new man? Well, let’s catch up with what he’s doing now!
Fyre Festival II: This Time It’s Personal!
Yep, he announced a second attempt (!!!) at the Fyre music festival. He was charging $1.1 million for some tickets. with the event due to start in May 2025.
Then, to your staggering astonishment we’re sure, the event was postponed in April 2025. See in The Guardian: Fyre festival 2 ‘postponed’ just weeks before it was scheduled to start:
“The event, advertised as a luxury music festival, was supposed to take place in Mexico from 30 May to 2 June. It was intended as an improved follow-up to the failed first Fyre festival in 2017, which experienced problems with security, food, accommodation, medical services and artist relations, resulting in the festival being indefinitely postponed and eventually cancelled.”
On April 23rd 2025, in a press release on Fyre.Mx, McFarland stated this:
“When my team and I launched FYRE Festival 2, it was about two things: finishing what I started and making things right.
Over the past two years, we’ve poured everything into bringing FYRE back with honesty, transparency, relentless effort, and creativity. We’ve taken the long road to rebuilding trust. We rebuilt momentum. And we proved one thing without a doubt:
FYRE is one of the most powerful attention engines in the world.”
He goes on to add:
“We have decided the best way to accomplish our goals is to sell the FYRE Festival brand, including its trademarks, IP, digital assets, media reach, and cultural capital – to an operator that can fully realize its vision.”
In other words, the guy is out of his depth with this one, the concept isn’t manageable, and he’s trying to pass it on to someone else.
It’s baffling for everyone else to watch this sort of strange conviction in a project that landed him in prison, but there we go. Once she’s out of prison, Elizabeth Holmes will be doing exactly the same thing, too.
As in the world of capitalism, if you bullshit hard enough you can sell anyone a dream and the glory of “success” awaits thee.
