This post was originally written on 1/27/19 for subscribers of the daily taryn, a daily email newsletter/writing project . Now's the perfect time to join, so I'll hold while you do so by clicking this. Love u.
If you haven't watched the Fyre Festival docs on Hulu or Netflix yet, I beg of you — do it. I have the unpopular opinion of preferring Hulu's, but both are great and you'll want to watch both.
If you don't know what Fyre Festival is, here's the best way to sum it up: a wannabe tech mogul pairs up with a washed-up hip-hop artist to throw the "once in a lifetime music festival of your dream." They spent all their time and money and attention and smarts on marketing, drawing millions of impressions and eyes on this festival - but spent an embarrassingly small amount of all of those things to actually execute the festival. It's no spoiler to tell you that it was a massive failure — that's actually just the tip of the iceberg on this story.
After re-watching both tonight with Kris, I feel sick. Could be the french fries I had after trying to #EatClean, but I think it's this horror story. We cannot underestimate the influence and power of social media. It's insane, what people will believe from an ad. What people will spend on a pipedream. What people will sacrifice to live the lives of the rich and famous. What people think is true, just because they see a clip on someone's story or feed. People do not understand that social media is not the whole story — it's actually SO far from it. It's wrong and weird and sad, and not something we should take likely. For people like me who grew up in the internet age — we have to watch the burning flame that was Fyre Fest and take it as a cautionary tale. We have to use it to make better decisions about what to buy, who to vote for, and where to give. We have to understand when we're being marketed to — when something is worth trusting or when you're being lured into a dumpster fire. We have to know what's being put in front of us to make us believe something that's utterly far from the truth. We have to learn from this.
If we don't, we'll be living in one big Fyre Festival in no time.