“Instead of thinking about models, you kind of have to think about toilets.”

Keith Siilats (Pilot/Logistics)

Anyone even tangentially involved in a May Ball knows that’s where you start: toilets are basically someone’s entire job. I remember watching the collapse of Fyre Festival via Twitter with fascination and, whilst I have zero sympathy for the wealthy “influencers” taken in by the same smoke and mirrors they peddle, we now see footage of co-founder Billy McFarland stating bluntly “we’re selling a pipe dream to your average loser.” In the same week, Netflix and Hulu are releasing competing documentaries about the disaster. I take serious issue with McFarland reportedly being paid over $100,000 to appear in Hulu’s. Although Jerry Media, which marketed the festival, is involved in the Netflix documentary, they don’t exonerate themselves and have access to high quality footage from the preparatory stages. The documentary’s lesson is hard to find: is it the lack of substance in Millennial culture that values fame and self-promotion over grounded honesty? Yet McFarland was hailed as an “amazing entrepreneur” for past ventures that were a combination of luck and duplicity, breeding hubris and a predatory sense of entitlement. This is perhaps a problem with the very concept of capitalist success, where those who find it are assumed to have earned it, to the point that they believe it themselves. “By solving problems,” consultant Marc Weinstein realises, “we were just enabling them to continue to create this monster.”

8/10