Comment by sjjshvuiajhz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sjjshvuiajhz | Hacker News Reader

I think the key question is: would any other marketing company have done the same as FuckJerry, attempting to do the job they were hired for given McFarland’s ability to trick people into thinking the festival was going to be a good experience? Or did FuckJerry know that the people they were marketing to were not going to get the fun time they expected? This article’s detailed logs of who had what job title when on the production of each movie don’t seem to get at the relevant issue of fault. The alleged crimes here are the production and promotion of the festival, not the production of movies created by people trying to assign blame after the fact.

McFarland has been conclusively shown to be a con-man (eg. spammed the Fyre attendee email list selling tickets to nonexistent celebrity meet-and-greets while he was out on bail). We should take narratives that benefit him at the expense of people he lied to with a big lump of salt, given his ability to manipulate.

It could be as simple as FuckJerry having two things in hand: 1) footage and access to insiders 2) the failure of the festival making headlines and probably getting more attention than if it went off without a hitch

The logical solution isn't to just sit on these two things and write the whole project off as a loss, it would be to try and make at least some revenue off of the whole thing. I think any business in their position would have done the same.

It might be logical for FuckJerry to try to exploit the situation that they have already exploited once. It's not logical for Netflix to do business with them. From Netflix's point of view: It's reputational risk - you know these people were involved int he fraud and now you're going to publish their 'investigation' into it. Maybe FJ could have sold the footage and maybe sold the interviews, but anything involving them in a editorial role is propaganda. It has to be. They're not going to expose their business for the sake of one documentary.

> would any other marketing company have done the same as FuckJerry

Are you asking if ANY company would have done the same, or if EVERY company would do the same?

If it's the latter, there are many marketing agencies out there that want to market products that actually exist, and understand that marketing a scam is a potential PR nightmare, in addition to being unethical. Such companies will cancel a contract as soon as it becomes clear that the product cannot be delivered as advertised.

It seems like McFarland had an incredible ability to make people think he could overcome the issues with the festival and make it a success, which is why so many people worked day and night to try to pull it off. Are we supposed to believe the marketing agency should have predicted its failure and quit when so many people on the ground at the island didn’t?

What the people on the ground at the island wanted most was to get paid. Sounds like Fyre would have been a boon for the local economy and I think they assumed they would get paid even if the festival tanked, which is not unreasonable when someone shows up flashing lots of cash.

FuckJerry, on the other hand, had far more insider knowledge as well as the financial freedom to walk away from the project. They did not.

I think the only group that could be considered "true believers" like you describe are the Fyre employees.

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