Fyre Fraud

I was very interested in the Fire festival fiasco when it broke in the spring of 2017. I watched the Netflix documentary first, and then Hulu's Verizon. Overall, I think the Netflix version has a more linear story progression and I like how it focused on the victim impact more so than the Hulu version. This Hulu doc also simply seems more amateur than the Netflix doc. I'm surprised no other reviews have mentioned it, but in this documentary when they want to relay informtaion from a court filing or statement, they have it read by one of those awful computer reading services which just sounds incredibly hokey and is frankly distracting. I've never seen that "artistic" choice in a film before. However, it you are very interested in all the details of this scandal, I would recommend both documentaries as they both contain distinct information. If you're trying to choose between them, then I would recommend the Netflix one over this.

"In the millennial era, scamming is the air we breathe." - Jia Tolentino, writer for the New Yorker

'Fyre Fraud' tells the story of a con man pretty well, and also puts it into the larger context of the current generation and social media. Between the cons, enablers, internet influencers, and the entitled, all of them reeking of incredible selfishness, it made me want to weep for humanity.

Con Artist have been around forever but there are particular times when they thrive and benefit from a societal situation more. For example Con artist ran rampant during America's Great Depression era due to the heartbreaking need to survive at all cost by the public. Most people needed to have faith in something during that time and con artist were more than happy to provide that source in things like fake jobs, get rich quick schemes or even religion. What this documentary exposes is that we are in a new era that appears to be ripe for the same tactics used in previous times but on a larger scale. The big difference is the size and scope of the scam and more importantly the fact that we aren't in a Great Depression. As a matter of fact , these new scams are now in the form of politics, social status and popularity. And often times take advantage of the very wealthy. This particular scam only worked because of the uncanny need of its victims to want to be apart of something exclusive and to , in a way, execute their very own scam of false success through social media. What this documentary does a good job of showing is that the success of cons are as much about the people who fall for them as it is about the con artist. The main culprit in this film looks and acts like every single con artist through out time, he's confident to the point of arrogance, talks a mile a minute and never takes no for an answer. He's narcissistic and greedy but yet really doesn't hide those negative traits. As a matter of fact, like most frauds, the first con is to convince people that those negative traits are actually positives. On the surface, none of this scam should've worked. But like what his developer parents no doubt taught him, it's not about what an item is in the present , it's what it could be in the future. In many ways real estate developers have the same traits as con men because of that ability to sale what isn't there. They are masters at getting people and financial institutions to buy into a speculation. This main character spent a lifetime doing exactly this over and over again. And like most con men they fail, they fail big, but yet they find a way to convince their victims to not focus on their past failures but to focus on the awards of the future. Every single person who was involved with or attended this failure of a festival could've used the same social media to find out that its leader was a con artist. But yet they didn't. They decided to once again put their faith into the speculation. Ja Rule ,for example, who maintains the whole thing wasn't a scam , actually worked with the guy before ,executing a previous scam that was funded by yet another scam artist oil tycoon. How do you ignore all of this and decide to go into business once again with the same person? Well the same reason a bank decides to invest into a development when the developer has filed bankruptcy 3 times, by investing into the dream. Ja Rule , like everyone else desperately wanted to be a part of the dream. Whether it's greed or the need to be wanted, those desires override the logical because being logical is not "exciting". Mark my words, we will hear from the main character again and I guarantee the next con will be bigger than this one and once again it will be successful, because the victims will need for it to be.

Interestingly, "Fyre Fraud" was released on Hulu a few days before the Netflix documentary on the same subject, the latter of which is the first one I watched.

I found it so compelling that I rushed to watch "Fyre Fraud", having read that both docs had plenty of interesting footage to offer, with this one including an actual interview with the con artist behind the scam, Billy McFarland.

Clips of the interview are inserted here and there, but to be perfectly honest, do not provide much insight or reveal anything shocking, besides providing somewhat satisfactory cringey moments where McFarland seems to be sweating bullets and is seen stuttering in embarrassment after being asked certain questions that he obviously won't/can't answer due to ongoing lawsuits. The tone is not overly confrontational, but they did not shy away from asking tricky questions.

While the Netflix piece had a well-organized, countdown type of structure that documented the lead-up to this disastrous event in great detail then depicted the event itself, both with plenty of on-site footage, "Fyre Fraud" uses a different approach, instead focusing on everything surrounding the event and the more philosophical questions that this literally empty shell raises: is this, to a greater extent, the result of a culture of emptiness? And while "Fyre Fraud" is certainly inferior as far as narrative structure is concerned, it digs deeper than the Netflix doc in its study of "influencers" and millennial culture. While they do not get that much screen time, there are two interviews with influencers who attended the event (no clue what their names are) who, after being candidly asked what an influencer is and how they would describe their "brand" (which is basically themselves and the "lifestyle" that they document, one heavily filtered picture at a time), both answered "positivity" after hesitating for a moment, struggling to find a meaning to something blatantly meaningless.

There are several other people being interviewed, only a minority of which are also interviewed in the Netflix doc. As such, it was interesting to get different perspectives and, in many aspects, both documentaries are very interesting in their own right and could very well have been merged into one lengthy piece. Anyhow, as I was not familiar with the lead-up to the event and how it all unfolded, I'm happy I got to watch both docs in that order, as "Fyre Fraud" really focuses on the fraudulent aspect of it rather than all the cringe-worthy logistic and administrative failures that led to the disaster. My suggestion would be to watch both docs, starting with Netflix's. That way, with "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened", you'll get a really satisfactory depiction of the facts, including plenty of on-site footage prior to the event and during the event, and then, with "Fyre Fraud", you'll get a better picture of the aftermath, as well as an interesting, more in-depth sociological analysis of the psychological and behavioral traits of a delusional generation obsessed with flashing pictures of a luxurious lifestyle that a serial con man was able to successfully exploit.

On its own, "Fyre Fraud" might feel a bit incomplete if you're looking for actual footage of this disaster. However, as a complement to "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened", it is highly satisfactory and completes the Netflix piece's deficiencies in terms of social commentary.

That being said, if you have to choose between the two, I would suggest "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened".

It is some fairly deep irony when a "documentary" on a subject of exploitative people, using vapid, shallow influencers, to dupe rich kid victims who themselves may have deserved what they got, turns out to be itself exploitative, vapid and meaningless as well. Essentially the makers of "Fyre Fraud" engage in the same cheap marketing and lack of substance as the subject they are covering. We don't even learn why Ja Rule was not jailed

If you want to learn about this festival, the stages of fraud, and just how nasty everyone involved was, read one of the news articles, and skip this documentary which is so shallow and laughably emotional it could have been made by the fraudsters itself.