They say there's a sucker born every minute but ... whew, this is ridiculous.
Remember when Billy McFarland's infamous Fyre Fest stranded tons of rich people and influencers on a remote Caribbean island with barely any food, shelter, or facilities because it turned out it was a scam from the start? And then McFarland went to jail?
Well! McFarland was released from jail last year, and now he's back to his old tricks. Fyre Fest 2.0 has launched and somehow, it's pre-sale tickets are already sold out despite appearing to be just as big a scam as its first iteration.
Fyre Fest 2.0 has, as of this writing, no lineup, no venue, and no date. All we know is that it will again be in the Caribbean and will occur in 2024. And yet, pre-sale tickets, which start at $499 and go up to $7999, are entirely sold out.
Do you think whoever coined the phrase, "too much money and not enough sense" ever thought their idiom would be this apt?
It's starting to sound an awful lot like Fyre Fest 2.0 is just Fyre Fest 1.0 all over again. That epic debacle was such a mess that it resulted in multiple lawsuits, a fraud conviction that sent McFarland to both prison and a halfway house, and millions of dollars of paybacks to investors. Oh, and possibly an illicit blowjob?
It also spawned two documentaries, Netflix's FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu's Fyre Fraud, which became instant viral hits as huge as the Twitter and Instagram response that erupted as influencers and rich people showed up to the 2017 festival and began documenting what they found.
Which was, in case you've forgotten, a roster of performers that had mostly bailed, accommodations and bathrooms that were not finished being built, and no food except for the infamous cheese sandwich.
Of course, the flipside to all that laughter and schadenfreude was that the Fyre Fest attendees were legitimately endangered by McFarland's fraud and incompetence.
But the "fool me twice, shame of me" of it all makes it seem like there will be very little sympathy this time around, if the social media response to Fyre Fest 2.0 is any indication.
Best of luck to all Fyre Fest 2.0 ticketholders. May the odds be ever in your favor.
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