I remember hearing about Fyre Festival through friends on social media talking about how it looked like the coolest thing ever. I watched the promo video and it all seemed way too good to be true, but then I'm a cynic and I thought "Hey, maybe I'll be wrong". Yeah, not a chance.
This documentary in a lot of ways is a brilliant insight into social media & its influence on modern society. The entire festival was built up from promo videos posted on social media and posts from 'influencers' (a term that I absolutely hate and this documentary shows why you shouldn't trust 'influencers') that detailed an idealistic experience that every Instagram and Facebook obsessed kid would dream of.
The funniest thing is that in reality, these kids didn't actually want to attend the festival, rather they wanted to be seen attending it - they wanted to post about it on social media to show that THEY had been there. The whole festival was about the image, and that was a great marketing factor in the 'organisers' favour (I say 'organisers' because as you see in the documentary, it doesn't look like anyone organised anything here).
The beauty of this is that everything about the festival was surface level. There was nothing underneath. No-one had bothered to actually engage anyone with real business acumen in the festival planning industry until too late in the piece. It's probably one of the best examples of why money isn't necessarily the answer to everything. The co-founders had a lot of money and it didn't save anything. There needed to be some actual business development here and no-one really bothered to give that its dues.
The worst thing is that, while I didn't like the concept from the start, this type of festival could really have worked. Sure, it's still a complete shining example of the social media craze amongst our society but there was still potential. If there had been an actual plan from the start, and it wasn't throw together based on a promo video and 'influencer' posts, then we could have seen some revolutionary event that everyone wanted to attend, even if they didn't want to admit it. But we didn't see that. What we saw instead is a bunch of idiots thinking that their great ideas will just work because they're really passionate about them. Be careful of your obsession with your image, otherwise you might end up like ol' Billy.
This documentary in a lot of ways is a brilliant insight into social media & its influence on modern society. The entire festival was built up from promo videos posted on social media and posts from 'influencers' (a term that I absolutely hate and this documentary shows why you shouldn't trust 'influencers') that detailed an idealistic experience that every Instagram and Facebook obsessed kid would dream of.
The funniest thing is that in reality, these kids didn't actually want to attend the festival, rather they wanted to be seen attending it - they wanted to post about it on social media to show that THEY had been there. The whole festival was about the image, and that was a great marketing factor in the 'organisers' favour (I say 'organisers' because as you see in the documentary, it doesn't look like anyone organised anything here).
The beauty of this is that everything about the festival was surface level. There was nothing underneath. No-one had bothered to actually engage anyone with real business acumen in the festival planning industry until too late in the piece. It's probably one of the best examples of why money isn't necessarily the answer to everything. The co-founders had a lot of money and it didn't save anything. There needed to be some actual business development here and no-one really bothered to give that its dues.
The worst thing is that, while I didn't like the concept from the start, this type of festival could really have worked. Sure, it's still a complete shining example of the social media craze amongst our society but there was still potential. If there had been an actual plan from the start, and it wasn't throw together based on a promo video and 'influencer' posts, then we could have seen some revolutionary event that everyone wanted to attend, even if they didn't want to admit it. But we didn't see that. What we saw instead is a bunch of idiots thinking that their great ideas will just work because they're really passionate about them. Be careful of your obsession with your image, otherwise you might end up like ol' Billy.