Maybe 2019 won’t be a terrible year after all, because this Fyre Festival content just keeps on coming. In the battle of the two dueling Fyre documentaries, one of the most interesting aspects was the role of Fuck Jerry, and who was truly responsible for the fiasco. In the Hulu documentary, one of the main interview subjects was Oren Aks, who worked for Jerry Media to help market the festival. Oren no longer works there, and the movie ended with him giving Jerry Media the middle finger, in case you were wondering where that professional relationship ended up.
Well, it doesn’t look like Oren and Fuck Jerry will be patching things up any time soon, because Oren is stirring up some serious sh*t on social media. He apparently still has the password to the official Fyre Festival Instagram account, which seems like a major oversight, and he relaunched the Fyre Festival IG account over the weekend. That’s right, Fyre is back in business.
In the bio for the account, which is still verified, it says that Oren is running the account, and that it’s not affiliated with Hulu, Netflix, or Fyre Media. I’m no lawyer, but I feel like as far as legal protections go, this is about as ironclad as posting one of those “I do not consent to Facebook sharing my data to third parties” statuses. I mean, he’s still using their name, handle, and logo, but whatever. And if you had any doubt about whether Oren was truly the one behind this, he’s posted about it on his own Instagram Story, and he’s also the only account that Fyre Festival follows.
So now that Oren has brought back the Fyre Instagram, what does he intend to do with it? His ultimate motives are still unclear, but I have a feeling that it’s not something Billy McFarland would approve of (unless it’s a scam). The biggest clue we’ve gotten so far is an IG Story of the comment keyword filters on the account being deleted. If you forgot about these, this was their way of hiding criticism in the weeks leading up to the festival, when it should have been clear to attendees that it was going to be a sh*t show. If comments contained words such as “fake,” “scam,” or “festival,” they were immediately hidden. So, when concerned ticket holders tried to ask questions on the Fyre Festival Instagram about things like how their plane tickets were getting to them or just generally what the deal was, those comments would automatically get deleted and they would get a swift block. Same thing would happen to anyone who tried to warn festivalgoers that the so-called “one-in-a-lifetime experience” may not have been what it seemed. I mean, you know things are bad when a literal music festival is afraid of the word “festival” being used against them.
Now it looks like you’ll be able to comment whatever you want on any of the Fyre Festival posts, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to cancel all my plans for the rest of the week. For now it just looks like people making Fyre Festival jokes, so I hope something big breaks soon.
No matter what ends up happening with this, I’m happy to see that Oren, like me, is a messy bitch who lives for drama. I’m also glad that the Fyre brand isn’t truly dead, because nothing else has brought me more joy in the last month. If I were to Marie Kondo my entire life, I’d be left with approximately two shirts and five hundred Fyre documentaries. With this news and rumors of Evian enthusiast Andy King getting his own show, there’s lots more to look forward to, so stay tuned.
Images: @fyrefestival / Instagram (3)
Since last year, we knew that both Hulu and Netflix were working on documentaries about one of our favorite scams of all time, the Fyre Festival. Obviously, I was very excited to get an in-depth look at this complete and utter sh*tshow, but I had to wonder, are these movies really both necessary? Netflix announced that theirs would drop on January 18th, so I started to get excited. Then, last week, Hulu proved that it really is a messy b*tch who lives for drama, and dropped theirs three days before Netflix as a surprise. Hulu gets an automatic 10 bonus points just for that level of pettiness.
So because I’m a hardworking journalist (and a fellow messy b*tch who lives for drama), I watched both documentaries, and I’m going to break down some of the differences. First of all, both movies are actually really good. The fundamental story is fascinating, and both Netflix and Hulu did a great job of crafting a narrative that feels informative and fun at the same time. Both have interviews with some key players, including a few of the same people, who are obviously extra hungry for exposure justice. Oh, and both make Ja Rule look like a total dick. Like, how is his lawyer allowing him to tweet?
Sooo did they have all this food or did they serve cheese sandwiches??? Asking for a friend… https://t.co/kSIqgbtvwS
— Ja Rule (@Ruleyork) January 20, 2019
The thing I liked most about the Hulu documentary, Fyre Fraud, is the amount of backstory it gives us on Billy McFarland. From his credit card company Magnises, all the way back to hacking the computers in elementary school, we get a clear picture of how Billy has always had a compulsion to scam. Part of the reason we get so much of this information is because Fyre Fraud has interviews with Billy. He doesn’t provide that much useful info, other than a lot of red flags to look out for if you think you’re on a date with a sociopath. Because of pending legal action, there are some things he won’t comment on, but he also tells some wild lies, like that they had 250 luxury villas rented, but they lost the box with all the keys. I can’t make this sh*t up. We also get interviews with Billy’s hot Russian girlfriend, who I have some serious questions for.
Fyre, the Netflix movie, has some of the backstory woven in, but it focuses more on what was happening on the ground in the Bahamas. While Billy sat this one out, lots of key members of the Fyre team are interviewed, and you really get a sense of how many people tried to stop this disaster from happening. Basically, Billy didn’t want to hear any negativity, so people either left or got back to work. Heads up: there is one story about a request Billy made of one of his employees that will fully leave your jaw on the floor. Fyre also talks a bit more about the pain Billy & Co. caused for the local residents of the Bahamas, which is truly the most f*cked up part of this story. Some of these people gave everything they had to make this thing a success, but they were just being lied to the entire time.
Overall, Fyre (Netflix) gave me more information to actually understand what happened at Fyre Festival. I’ve always wondered why the whole thing wasn’t just canceled the week before, and I get it now. Both movies do an excellent job of showing how brilliant the influencer-based marketing campaign was, and how it was destined to be a disaster from almost the first minute of planning. If you’re truly interested in this kind of stuff, you really should watch both movies, because they complement each other quite well. If you’re like, busy or something, watch the Netflix one, because it has the Fyre Festival content you’ve been craving the most.
Or if documentaries aren’t really your thing, but you still want the deets on Billy McFarland, listen to the Fyre Festival episode of Not Another True Crime Podcast:
Images: Netflix; @ruleyork / Twitter; Giphy
