Some People Are Only Alive Cos Its Not Worth the Jail Time Mc Funny Patches
Can you believe it's been three years since the biggest festival debacle of the 21st century?
This month marks the third anniversary of Fyre Festival, the ill-fated Bahamas-based luxury event from 2017 that wound up becoming the butt of internet jokes and landing at least one of its organisers in jail.
It's a wild cautionary tale involving scam promotion, angry rich people, and one very sad cheese sandwich, which spawned countless memes and hugely popular documentaries for Hulu and Netflix.
The latter, titled Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, was basically the Tiger King of 2019: a baffling behind-the-scenes look at variously despicable characters caught in spiralling events that ensnared the zeitgeist.
Three years on, we're revisiting the key players to see who has best recovered from the Fyre burn.
Update: Turns out Billy Farland makes a cameo in another Netflix sensation, Inventing Anna, a series based on infamous scammer Anna Delvey. She ends up crashing on the couch of Farland, who is namechecked throughout the series, and (without spoiling too much) ends up conning the con man.
Andy King
The event producer who was ready and willing to 'take one for the team' came out of the whole Fyre saga an unlikely star thanks to his tale of bottled water, customs and oral sex in the Netflix doco.
Capitalising on his viral success, King came to visit Australia last year for BIGSOUND, landed an Evian sponsorship, and even got offers for his own TV show.
His latest venture? This week, King announced he'll be hosting Room Service Festival: a livestream event happening this weekend featuring Yungblud, Channel Tres, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and Australia's own What So Not Hayden James, Crooked Colours, and Joyride.
Playing out on YouTube channels Trap Nation and Chill Nation, viewers are encouraged to make donations to Feeding America and Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. Room Service Fest is designed to "bring everybody some well-deserved joy and distraction," King said in a statement. "This festival gives us a chance to translate the anniversary of Fyre into some real good that's needed in the world right now."
Billy McFarland
link
The Fyre founder and CEO is currently serving a six-year sentence in federal prison after being convicted of defrauding festival investors out of US$26 million in November 2018.
However, in light of the coronavirus crisis, McFarland is requesting he be released from prison early. He's currently incarcerated at Elkton prison in Ohio, where at least 60 inmates have recently tested positive for COVID-19.
McFarland's lawyer has pleaded to a US district court judge that the 28-year-old inmate has pre-existing conditions that make him "particularly vulnerable to catching and suffering from severe or fatal consequences of the virus," according to documents obtained by the Hollywood Reporter
"Mr. McFarland is not a risk to the community nor a threat to public safety," reads the request. "The crime to which he pled guilty for was the non-violent financial crime of wire fraud."
No word on if the prison food is as good as Fyre's culinary icon.
Ja Rule
link
Despite being a Fyre co-founder, Jeffrey 'Ja Rule' Atkins has managed to avoid the fate of his partner. In November 2019, a judge legally cleared Ja of any wrongdoing, meaning he evaded a $100 million lawsuit.
He even painted himself a victim of Billy McFarland, speaking out after the two documentaries (in which he didn't appear) shed light on the scams and defrauding going on, leading to this iconic tweet:
But he wasn't above cashing in on the attention. He made noises about staging a new edition of "the most iconic festival that never was", then in December, released a track called 'FYRE' featuring some clunky-ass rhymes.
'The fest—the festival is on fire/We don't need no water, make that mother**ker hotter," he raps. 'Hotter than the sun, but it wasn't that/Show of hands if you got your money back?/Just playing, I got sued for that/100 mil to be exact.'
Of course, all this made Ja Rule a prime target for trolling, and fed up from being roasted online, he snapped earlier this year and clapped back at tweets calling for the end of the Fyre gags. 'Cause you know, that always works...
MaryAnn Rolle
Maryann Rolle speaks on the Netflix documentary, Fyre Festival.
Rolle was the Bahamian restaurateur at the Exuma Point Bar & Grill who was scammed out of $50,000 in life savings to feed the festival crew and (very temporary) attendees. She was the tragic human reminder that beyond the punchlines, there were genuine victims amidst Fyre's spectacularly chaotic collapse.
Viewers of the Netflix doco quickly rallied around her heartbreaking cause, donating to a GoFundMe campaign that went on to raise over US$ 233,700. But she almost got scammed a second time, when a friend who'd helped set up the crowdfunding to help recoup finances nearly walked away with half of the funds. Watch how that played out in the VICE interview below.
Oooft. That's the latest we've seen of Rolle, who has, understandably, avoided attention after being hounded by media and financial requests from other islanders. But hey, Google the Exuma Point Bar & Grill and you'll find a stack of glowing reviews.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/news/musicnews/fyre-festival-where-are-they-now-andy-king-ja-rule-billy-mcfarl/12177266
0 Response to "Some People Are Only Alive Cos Its Not Worth the Jail Time Mc Funny Patches"
Post a Comment