Ania Swider Prompt #3

Ania Swider

COMM-123

With music streaming services on the rise in the United States, it has never been easier to instantly listening to music—in March of 2018, Apple music garnered 49.5 million monthly users (Statista, 2019a). And yet, the average spent on music festivals in 2017 was nearly 635 million dollars in the United States (Statista, 2019b). As we quickly move away from physical record stores or buying CDs, there is still an inherent desire to uphold any physical aspect to listening to music. Music streaming services can do everything a music festival can do by aggregating our favorite artists or playing their most popular songs. It is the physical experience, however, that allows music festivals to maintain a leg up despite these similarities.

Fyre Festival was going to be the next best experience. The Hulu documentary Fyre Fraud provides some clarity regarding the chaos and disaster that was the Fyre Festival and the true power of social media.

From an outsider’s perspective, it is hard to understand how anyone could have fallen into the trappings of Fyre Festival. Fyre Fraud opens by unpacking just how the festival preyed on the weaknesses of millennials, most of whom are holed up in their parent’s basement aimlessly scrolling through Instagram. As the original marketing video for Fyre Festival is playing, it is juxtaposed with a stark insight into the millennial psyche. The narrator explains how just from the picturesque images flooding people’s feeds, it’s no wonder that people felt compelled to go. It was an opportunity for validation. The fact that these ordinary people were watching videos of beautiful people in places that they weren’t, doing things that they couldn’t afford to do, it made them want to go even more. Fyre Festival created hype off the vulnerability of millennials trying to stay relevant. And it is on that cinematic introduction alone that Fyre Fraud viewers may slowly begin to understand just how this all could have possible happened.

As the documentary progresses, it adds color to the very reasons Fyre Festival was able to reach the success that it did, before its ultimate disastrous end. Fyre Fraud succeeded at truly unpacking just how instant communication played a strong hand, even though social media was ultimately its downfall (Fyre Fraud, 2019). With the rise of digital technologies such as Instagram, it has only become easier to post without any accountability. The Jerry Media enterprise was brought on the team to market Fyre Festival as this meaningful cultural experience. Fyre Fraud showcases how almost instantly, Jerry Media was able to flood everyone’s timeline with Fyre Festival, and from there, it only spread like wildfire. The bright orange squares caught people’s attention as they aimlessly scrolled through their feed. And suddenly, anyone who was at least someone on social media was talking about Fyre Festival. This coupled with their help from influencers, the instant communication across the internet only grew louder. Kendall Jenner’s Instagram post—and other influencers’—was the clout Fyre Festival needed.

While the documentary unpacked just how important influencers and Instagram was for Fyre Festival, one can’t help but see just how much John Fiske’s ideas from Understanding Popular Culture are relevant within the context of Fyre Festival. Fiske argues that all popular culture is a struggle between the power-bloc and the people. To him, it is not the content of popular culture or its production that is important, but rather, the processes of meaning making attached to that cultural artifact that are important (Fiske, 2001). Fyre Festival attached meaning by using influencers and creating a new reality. The documentary spoke to the millennial generation having seen so much pain through media technologies, for example, 9/11, and has constructed their vision of the world through media, that now, they want to construct their own reality. Fyre Festival was able to prey off of this. As Fiske argues, “Popular culture is made by the people, not imposed upon them…” (Fiske, 2001, p. 25). Billy McFarland, a millennial himself, was very much so aware of the importance of influencers and being relevant. In creating the festival, he sought to give it meaning by using influencers and constructing this fantasy for weak and vulnerable millennials. Fiske speaks to this notion of the weak versus the strong within popular culture and makes a defense for the weak noting that it is them that matter the most in popular culture (Fiske, 2001). Popular culture is made by the strong to be consumed by the weak. Fyre Festival gained its hype and notoriety because its strong producers silenced any dissenters and it was able to produce this ideal fantasy image that the weak consumers couldn’t resist. And so, for the weak millennial, “…when an opportunity presents itself to get out of your parent’s basement and be a part of something culturally relevant, you’re gonna absolutely jump at that” (Fyre Fraud, 2019).

Just as quickly as this talk about Fyre Festival could be sparked, it was also silenced. Fyre Fraud brought attention to the very ways in which Fyre Festival maintained this ideal image of this fantasy experience. One of the speakers in the documentary was the face behind the anonymous Twitter page “Fyre Fraud”. As he began to post tweets sharing the truth about Fyre Festival or tried to get articles published about the truth, the Fyre team only hit back harder. Oren Aks describes how certain words were blocked from the comments of the Fyre Instagram posts. If anyone tried to ask any question about the festival, their comments were deleted, and their accounts were blocked. For any dissenting articles published, the Fyre team attacked back with sensationalized articles hyping up the varying artists and influencers that would be in ‘attendance’. Although Christian Lorentzen speaks mostly within the context of book reviewing, he makes a relevant argument. We have become hostile to hostility. We no longer have an appetite for anything negative, solely positive things. And thus, there is no time for contemplation and only reaction (Lorentzen, 2019). This has significant relevance within Fyre Festival. It is easier to create and live in this perfect fantasy rather than addressing any of the problems at hand. Rather than ever trying to address any problems or questions, McFarland and his team only wanted to focus on the immediate fantasy and continue to regurgitate this false fantasy. Influencer culture only continues to perpetuate this idea. For Alyssa Lynch, one of the few influencers who attended, her experience seemed perfect—even if it was only like that for a few hours. Her time in a villa was far different than the hundreds of relief tents everyone else had. This further speaks to influencer culture where people perceive social media as a perfect fantasy, and this is exactly what Fyre Festival preyed upon, because to the creators, it was only the influencers that truly mattered.

Ultimately, Fyre Festival never stood a chance. Beyond just it’s unrealistic timeline, it was built off a weak base. Social media within the context of digital technologies is extremely uncertain and the epitome of ‘don’t believe everything you see online’. Fyre Festival fell victim to these flaws of social media because it was born and grown on social media. We can, however, now see just how uncertain digital media technologies truly are. As they continue to grow and develop, we must remember that they are not the end all be all of popular culture, because the very things they perpetuate are merely a fantasy. 

References

Average Spend on Music Festivals in 2017. (2019, February 12). Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/756236/spending-music-festivals/.

Fiske, J. (2001). Understanding Popular Culture. doi: 10.4324/9780203837177

Lorentzen, C. (2019, March 19). [Criticism] Like This or Die. Retrieved from https://harpers.org/archive/2019/04/like-this-or-die/.

Top U.S. Music Streaming Services by Users 2018. (2019, August 9). Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/798125/most-popular-us-music-streaming-services-ranked-by-audience/.