In April and May 2017, the music festival to end all music festivals was set to take place over two weekends on a Bahaman island. Fyre Festival was organized by Ja Rule and Billy McFarland as a Fyre Media marketing strategy. Like Coachella, Fyre Festival was destined to set the bar for music festivals so incredibly high, no other event could top it. However, organizers set the bar too high for themselves. Fyre Festival was an utter disaster and left thousands of ticket holders stranded, hungry, and demanding an explanation for the biggest dupe of 2017. Besides the event space being completely uninhabitable, the Fyre Festival food was abysmal. Not that music festival food is known for their cuisine, but most events serve edible snacks.
Attendees paid anywhere from $900 to almost $400,000 per ticket to party on a tropical island once owned by Pablo Escobar. They’d stay in eco-friendly, geodesic dome abodes, see performers like Blink-182 and Major Lazer up close and personal, and eat food prepared by Starr Catering.
Instead, shelter was minimal (and definitely not eco-friendly), the performers were no-shows, and Fyre attendees were reportedly served pathetic cheese sandwiches.
Social media was soon ablaze as people began arriving to the Bahaman island that looked more like “a disaster relief area,” rather than a luxury music festival, as one Fyre goer told NPR back in 2017. Fyre Media Inc. was hemorrhaging money, couldn’t pay performers nor supply the promised food, water, or any of the grandiose perks ticket-holders were expecting.
Those who dropped thousands for a weekend at Fyre expected this:
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz5kY3RsmKo"]But got this (infamous cheese sandwich included):
The dinner that @fyrefestival promised us was catered by Steven Starr is literally bread, cheese, and salad with dressing. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd
— Tr3vor (@tr3vorx) April 28, 2017
The entire medical team is gone. THE MEDICAL TEAM. MISSING. pic.twitter.com/2vy23SF626
— sunday (@ur_first_kiss) April 28, 2017
This sums up Fyre Festival. #fyre #fyrefestival #fyrefest pic.twitter.com/x4xcFBL8Yg
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) April 28, 2017
Along with the lack of food and clean drinking water, security was at a minimum, thus leading to a dangerous environment that organizers had little control over. There was no communication between staff and attendees, and native islanders and their businesses were horrendously taken advantage of by Fyre organizers.
The entire chaotic uproar is revealed in two documentaries that recently dropped. FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is currently streaming on Netflix. And Fyre Fraud is available to stream on Hulu.
Although the entire retelling of the event from two different angles is stunning (Hulu’s Fyre Fraud actually interviews Billy McFarland), people are really going to town with the realization that the viral cheese sandwich tweet was the catalyst in turning Fyre into the laughing stock of the internet.
The Netflix #FyreFestival documentary neglected to address whether the cheese sandwich served was any good.
— Todd Barry (@toddbarry) January 19, 2019
FYRE FESTIVAL WAS SINGLE HANDEDLY BROUGHT DOWN BY A PICTURE OF A CHEESE SANDWICH
— paige hettinger (@404paigenotfnd) January 19, 2019
That cheese sandwich is what did it boo #FyreFestival pic.twitter.com/KjVXdlAB5i
— 🇵🇦 Anji Ray™ 🇺🇸 (@anjiray) January 20, 2019
When the cheese sandwich hit Twitter that night #FyreFestival #Fyre pic.twitter.com/NAFyneRG3U
— B E A N Z (Miss U Mom) (@BeanzGotGamez) January 19, 2019
I am having lunch with two kids who have never heard of the Fyre Festival and it is so delightful I immediately had to show them a picture of the cheese sandwich.
— Sarah Thyre (@SarahThyre) January 20, 2019
Even though that cheese sandwich is utterly disastrous, we can all agree that the real disaster was how the organizers mishandled their funds, tricked islanders and attendees out of their money, and created an unsafe environment and event that they’re still picking up the pieces of.
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljkaq_he-BU"] [fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ0KNVU2fV0"]Check out both documentaries and form your own opinion as to what really happened at Fyre. Whoever you blame, you cannot deny that the cheese sandwich did a number on what was supposed to be the greatest event of all time.
