Nadia Aimufua Prompt #3

The original Hulu documentary, entitled Fyre Fraud (2018), was a clever and insightful movie that tells the backstory of Billy McFarland, a millennial, self-proclaimed tech entrepreneur, who was jailed for fraud after fabricating the “Fyre” music festival that scammed thousands of attendees and wasted millions of investment dollars in 2017. The film begins with the enterprising coming of age story of McFarland, who clearly seemed to grasp from the intricacies of mediatization, explained by Alice Marwick (2015) as social media’s increase in relevance in the framework of society. He built not just one, but two start-up companies using this principle, and basically self-willed their success through feigned internet popularity and media presence. McFarland rose to his theoretical “power” at the start of his professional career by launching a credit card company called Magnises, which had one reckless angel investor, and eventually gained customers because of hype, a concept defined by Dr. Devon Powers (2019) as something with an anticipation generated through a circulation of promotion, which can result in an inflated expectation of its value. After Magnises’ launch and immediate investment success in New York, McFarland capitalized on advertisement. Media writers publicized the company, and their press releases painted McFarland to be a promising self-starting business man worthy of investing your personal funding with, regardless of the fact that he had no prior experience in banking. Social media and the rise of the influencer has made this kind of manipulation all too prevalent for the modern generation of consumers, who spend so much time and energy absorbed in the idealized and marketed lives of celebrities and influencers. These influencers, as defined by Crystal Abidin (2018), have gained their status based off of what they do with their free time, as well as the products and narrated lifestyle that they are affiliated with, rather than the actual talents that they bring to a certain industry. They are walking, talking advertisements, who are able to endorse products and events to their large followings simply by posting or talking about them.The media strategists in the movie explain that Magnisis was promoted to the top of New York pop culture, and its success was actually more connected to the brand’s hyped up image of being a credit card company for young, cool adults at the top of New York’s social scene. By making its popularity grow online, McFarland and his team of influencers made the card company’s success grow in reality. Although Magnises eventually did fail miserably, it gave McFarland the idea that he could scam any millennial consumer by using social media to convince them that his product would help them gain social status. He used this realization to create Fyre, a music festival similar to Coachella, Burning Man, and other events that have taken the social media stratosphere by storm. The documentary next comedically describes the true events that transpired in order to make the Fyre Festival the enormously successful scam and failure that it was. It tells how the event hosted in the Bahamas promised to be one only imaginable through Instagram feeds, sold directly to you for a (sort of) feasible price. Its promise of exclusivity and instagram worthy moments, as described by the specialists in the documentary, exploited millenial’s engrained ideas about Alice Marwick’s (2015) theory of mediation, the implication of importance through social media. Kendall Jenner, one of the world’s most successful influencers, posted about the festival, which was the beginning of a whole new era for McFarland the future of Fyre. The documentary goes on to satirically talk about the
snowball effect that Jenner’s post caused across the internet. Her status as a top tier influencer, according to the speakers in the documentary, made smaller scale influencers reach out to Fyre’s marketing team practically begging for invitations the festival that they now wanted to attend because, apparently, other influencers were going to. When these influencers started posting about Fyre Festival, they were able to build hype around the event, and consumers in their influence spheres started to buy tickets and craved to be a part of the event that promised them an insight to the lives of their favorite influencers. The bright orange square photo that was coined by Fyre took social media platforms by storm, and the movie shows its quick and convincing circulation that catapulted the festival to a ticket-selling success. On the surface, the overwhelming publicity of Fyre through social platforms created the illusion of it being more legitimate and desirable than it really was. People and advertisers discussed the event only online, and without having to answer direct questions about specifics such as living arrangements or food. The distraction of popularity on social media made the festival take off with ample ticket sales, but also caused a curiosity about the festival that couldn’t quite be explained by McFarland due to the fact that he, quite frankly, had no real plan in place to make the festival a success. The sudden increase in traction and promotion made Billy realize that he couldn’t just cancel the event now that he had so many ticket sales and celebrities involved, but also, that he ironically couldn’t afford to house all of these buyers at the price he sold his tickets for. He quickly started selling assets and wiring funds that he didn't have, which was all easily concealed from advertisers and consumers considering the fact that they were only promoting and buying over social media, with no real need for physical proof or plans that the festival was being planned properly. Towards the end of the documentary, Fyre is shown to be a complete failure, with McFarland later tried and arrested for fraud, but the movie’s obvious goal was the discussion of how Fyre came to be, rather than what it came to be, which was a far more entertaining story to watch unfold. In essence, the ending of the storyline summarizes the idea that people of the millennial generation allow themselves to be scammed through social media and influence, and people, like McFarland, can easily take advantage of these media types. The specialists conclude with the fact that in this day and age of influence, millions of people can be convinced to spend money, time, and other assets on something completely insubstantial based completely off of the advice of microcelebrities. The documentary does a great job of casting interviewees that are millennials themselves, but amusingly self-aware of the negative impact that influencers and social media as a whole can have on theirs and future generations if we are not consciously weary of the fact that Instagram and hype cannot be mediums that we trust enough to invest copious amounts of money into.

Works Cited
Marwick, A. (2015). You may know me from YouTube: (Micro)-celebrity in social media. Pp. 333-350 in A Companion to Celebrity, edited by P. David Marshall and Sean Redmond. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Abidin, C. (2018, February 28). Communicative ❤ Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness. Retrieved October 28, 2019, from https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/.

Benjamin, W. (1936). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture, 48–60.

(2019, January 14). Retrieved November 10, 2019, from https://www.hulu.com/watch/e47078f3-1c0e-49a8-9da9-c571a7a20fec.

Marshall, P. D., & Marshall, P. D. (1997). Tools for the analysis of the celebrity as a form of 

cultural power. In Celebrity and power: fame in contemporary culture (pp. 51–76). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Powers, D. (2019). On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future. Urbana: University of Illinois Press