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Fyre Festival Is Being Sued For $100 Million And Here Are All Their Bullsh*t Apologies

Well, we all knew it would happen eventually. The organizers of Millennial Hunger Games, aka Fyre Festival, have been hit with a $100 million lawsuit, which seems appropriate given that $100 million is approximately the price of one ticket to the festival. The lawsuit, filed by Fyre Festival attendee and Rich Dumbass Who Was Stupid Enough To Buy Tickets To A “Luxury Music Festival” Daniel Jung alleges the festival “was nothing more than a get rich quick scam from the very beginning” and that the organizers (lol Ja Rule and Billy McFarland) “intended to fleece attendees for hundreds of millions of dollars by inducing them to fly to a remote island without food, shelter or water.”

I mean, yeah, sounds about right.

Given that whoever is responsible for this (Ja Rule and Billy McFarland) are basically in deep, deep shit, you’d probably not be surprised to hear that anyone even remotely connected to the festival has been rushing to Instagram to deliver their half-apologies and let you know that it is definitely, 100%, not their fault that all those rich people got stranded on an island with no water.

Now, I think I speak for those of us who were never going to Fyre Festival because we don’t have $12k just lying around to go on a Snapchat vacation when I say that this whole thing was a delight to watch. I truly have not felt this level of joy and camaraderie since my second grade class collected enough cans to win a pizza party. I had often dreamed of a world in which social media influencers would be rounded up and sent to a sandbar in the middle of the ocean where they’d be forced to fight for increasingly scarce resources, and this weekend we came closer to that dream than I’d ever imagined possible. Thank you Ja Rule. Thank you Bobby McFarland. If you go to jail for this, I will write you faithfully every day.

In honor of the wonderful disaster that was Fyre Festival, here is our ranking of Fyre Festival apologies, from most to least likely to ever live this down.

5. The Government Of The Bahamas

As soon as social media started realizing that Joanne The Scammer has pulled what was perhaps her most incredible scam yet, the government of the Bahamas was out here letting everybody know this shit was not their fault. In a statement posted to their website, The Bahamian government offered a “heartfelt apology to all who travelled to our country for this event,” but also shadily added that the “Ministry of Tourism is not an official sponsor” of the event, which is basically the diplomatic version of saying “don’t @ me.” Luckily for The Bahamas, I have a feeling this incident will have very little effect on future influencers travelling there in search of Instagram likes.

4. Bella Hadid

Wayyy back in December, when the Fyre Festival disaster was just a glimmer in Ja Rule’s eye, Bella Hadid and a number of other models were flown out to the Bahamas to shoot an extremely glamorous promo video, made specifically to entice rich boring people to buy tickets to the fest in hopes that they could live the “Bella Hadid on a boat with her friends” lifestyle. Now that it turns out the whole event was less Bachelor In Paradise and more Survivor: Millennial Vs. Millennial, Bella has come out hard making sure that everyone knows that she is both sorry that people got trapped on an island with no food or water, and totally free of fault. Well played, Bella. I think it’s safe to say that people know that you had nothing to do with the planning of this festival, but just make sure the next time you agree to sell something on Instagram that thing doesn’t result in the world’s first influencer refugee crisis.

3. Kendall Jenner

Kendall Jenner has not apologized and will never apologize. Not for Pepsi. Not for this. And not for just standing around while her younger sister injected herself with so much silicone that her face is going to fall off before she turns 30. It’s not Kendall’s job to give a fuck about what she sells on Instagram, it’s all of our jobs to wonder why we’re spending thousands of dollars on something that Kendall Jenner promoted on Instagram. Kendall Jenner doesn’t need to apologize to us. We should be thanking her for helping to shine a light on just how fucking stupid social media makes us all.

2. Billy McFarland

So before we even go into his legitimately hilarious apology, you should know that Billy McFarland is a Silicon Valley guy whose previous claim to fame was founding a company called Magnises (which appears to be a contraction of ‘Magnum’ and ‘Penises,’) a company that offered exclusive social “black cards” that were supposed to get you “exclusive VIP experiences” but just ended up being a kind of shitty version of your regular debit card. After the embarrassing disaster that was McFarland’s Magnum Penis Debit Card, Billy apparently thought, “What if we did the same thing, but on an island and really dangerous?” And thus, Fyre Festival was born.

In a spectacularly dumb apology published in Rolling Stone, McFarland said that it was “the toughest day of his life,” which is funny because he wasn’t the one trapped on an island with two slices of cheese and no water. He goes on to describe himself and business partner Ja Rule as “a little ambitious,” “naive,” and basically shoving all the responsibility onto a “bad storm.” Because I guess if a storm gets bad enough it can actually go back in time and make it so you never built half the shit you said you were going to build in the first place.

Most hilariously, Billy goes on to explain that there “will be make-up dates” and basically makes it seem like there will be another Fyre Festival in the future, except this time all the victors from past Fyre Festivals have to return to the island and compete against each other one last time in honor of the Quarter Quell. He ends his insane apology by saying the new festival will “keep the theme of being on water and beach. It’ll be not just music, but all forms of entertainment. The one change we will make is we will not try to do it ourselves. We wil make sure there is infrastructure in place to support us.”

Uh…hate to break it to you dude, but I don’t think there is going to be another festival. You kind of shit the bed on the first one. Best of luck with your lawsuit though!

1. Ja Fucking Rule

There are a lot of funny things about the Fyre Festival fiasco, but the funniest has to be the involvement of Ja Rule. Who’d have thought that a man who named his company Murder Inc might not be very good at business? Ja Rule’s apology is incredible for many reasons. For one, it was posted to Twitter via screenshot of a note on his phone, which is totally appropriate if you’re Taylor Swift accusing Kim Kardashian of character assassination, and less appropriate when you’re responsible for scamming people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and stranding them on an island.

So yeah, a couple of things here. Number one, and most importantly, “This is NOT MY FAULT…but I’m taking responsibility,” has to be one of the greatest sentences ever typed in notes and posted to Insta. I’m considering having it tattooed in Ja’s handwriting along my lower back. I love it so much. Second of all, please present even the smallest amount of evidence that this was “NOT A SCAM.” Who did you think was going to plan the festival for you? The festival elves? Ya’ll know Coachella isn’t just a naturally occurring part of desert ecology right?

Honestly, part of me feels bad for Ja because I think this is probably mostly Billy McFarland’s fault, but Ja has the bigger name, he will absolutely take the bigger fall. Let’s just hope all his “Mezmerize” royalties don’t run out anytime soon. 

Alise Morales
Alise Morales
Alise Morales is a comedy writer and performer. She is the writer of the Betches Sup Newsletter and co-host of the Betches Sup Podcast.