The Fyre Festival

Related image        Recently both Netflix and Hulu released documentaries on the infamous Fyre Festival, although the event took place back in 2017. The concept of this festival was created by Billy McFarland, the founder of Fyre Media Inc, in attempt to promote his new app that would help people book musicians. Through advertising and the use of social media platforms, such as Instagram, the Fyre Festival gained traction. However, the advertisements promised many things that the festival would not be. The advertisement video showed luxurious housing and food, when in reality there was no such thing. In the beginning they did attempt to fulfill what they had promised, but as the date of the event came closer, it became clear that they wouldn’t be able to do that. The private island that they had originally set to use fell through and they ended up on an island that could not accommodate everyone and wasn’t private. People spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a luxury festival but when they reached the island, they were greeted with FEMA tents and sandwiches.

The Fyre Festival acts as an example of the influence of social media on our lives. In just days, the festival went from something that no one had ever heard of before, to a trending hashtag on Instagram. Well known models were used to promote the festival and make it more wide spread. People were willing to spend a fortune because models had endorsed the brand. Fyre Media Inc, targeted people's trust in influencers and played it to their advantage.

The Fyre Festival exposed the power that social media has on us. We put our trust into products that are advertised because people like Billy McFarland can manipulate what we are shown. We are often too quick to throw our money out on a product that is well advertised. Advertisers pay celebrities to endorse their products because they know that we will put trust into people that have such a large following. The question is if it’s the advertisers fault for manipulating and putting out false advertisements or if it’s the consumers fault for buying into those products without truly knowing what they are purchasing.

Comments

  1. Devin CApril 29, 2019 at 7:23 PM

    The Fyre Festival is definitely not alone in the ability to suddenly persuade a large group of people, exactly what going "viral" means. In my opinion, one of the biggest reason things go "viral" is because of algorithms. For example, in the documentary we watched, there was tons and tons of private information that large companies would know, and we people would (unknowingly) be separated by our demographics -- and that was more than a decade ago! Now, it's hard to grasp an idea of how much media affects our lives, because of how "personalized" the media is.

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