Netflix Fyre Festival Documentary

I’ve been hearing about this documentary for a while now, and I finally sat down to watch it last night. I can see why this generated so much buzz. Spoilers are ahead.

If you’ve never heard of Fyre Festival, it was going to be a luxury music festival on a private island in the Caribbean. Every step of the way was a disaster and the creator of the event, Billy McFarland, never stopped pushing to make it happen.

I think we all love watching a train wreck and the way the story was told everyone seen it coming except the creator, Billy McFarland.

Of course, we only see the aftermath and stories from the people that were involved and hindsight is always 20/20. What struck me is how they all seemed to know it was never going to work but put their head down and continued working.

The craziest part to me was at the end after everything failed he called a meeting with his full-time employees and said something to the effect of, “No one is fired, and you all have jobs, but we will not be making payroll anymore.”

The whole documentary just reminded me so much of the VC push of growth at all costs and how these entrepreneurs bow to the dollar. They will do anything to enrich themselves.

More than anything you should watch this for the human side of it. How it seems we are all wired to pull for the team and even when we feel something isn’t quite right we push that to the side. People like McFarland know how to prey on this, and as employees, we all need to be on the lookout for hucksters and scammers.

If you go to a job interview and get an uneasy feeling about the company, keep looking. I know this is hard because you need a job, but sometimes you have to say no. The same way if you get multiple job offers really weigh them out. If you want to be happy long term, money should not be the driving force.