You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Fyre Festival’s downfall is the hilarious nadir of festie culture.

Neilson Barnard / Getty

So you pay like $10,000 for a ticket to a luxury musical festival in the Bahamas, on an island formerly owned by Pablo Escobar. Bella Hadid winks at you. You are promised resort-style accommodations, the best in “food, art, music, and adventure.” What you get is....

Fyre Festival, which was masterminded by Ja Rule and 26-year-old entrepreneur Billy McFarland, was set to feature artists including Blink-182 (who cancelled their headlining set yesterday as word of the mayhem spread), Major Lazer, and Migos. Instead, it has been canceled on its first day as “the physical infrastructure was not in place on time.” Festival-goers who arrived Thursday found shoddy tents, garbage, and, according to some fun rumors on reddit, wild dogs!

As the attendees are haphazardly evacuated from the island, the internet dances on the festival’s grave.

High-profile festivals that have introduced luxury tents include Coachella ($7,500 a pop) and Desert Trip (aka Oldchella–$10,000). Certainly, it is hard not to feel for anyone stuck in an airport for hours, but perhaps harder still not to take some snide enjoyment in this seemingly perfect example of what toxic festival culture has become—faux-bohemianism morphing into hyper-capitalism.