FINDING YOUR VOICE - PREP FOR ASSESSED DEBATE #3 - Fyre Festival Attendees Got What They Deserved



Summary

Fyre festival was a binfyre of a festival in which incompetence, management-ineptness, fraudulent advertising and social media combined to create a disastrous, yet compelling example of how FOMO and lies can combine to create chaos. But did the people who shelled out so much money to go to Fyre in a sense DESERVE to be conned? 

 Although Fyre is the hook for this debate and your opening statements should firmly say whether you feel sympathy for the 'victims' of Fyre - feel free to think more generally about whether social media - particularly insta and the power of influencers - is a dangerous new aspect of our online lives. I suspect that will form the basis for much of the discussion. 

Questions to be thinking about . . .  

what kind of people are we becoming that we are so influenced by influencers, so envious of the perceived 'glamourous life', that we're willing to spend so much money on temporarily 'partying like a rockstar'? 

With some attendees able to get refunds, and also using legal processes to sue the organisers of Fyre, Surely our sympathies around Fyre should really be around those people local to Exuma Island who were exploited? 

Who is to blame for the powerful effect social media has on us? Social media companies or us as users? 

Why do you think there is so much ENVY in the social media world - the sense always that someone, somewhere else, is leading a better life than you - is this something new to social media or has that kind of envy always been with us? Is this envy worse for certain social groups (the young, women) than others? 

Useful links. 

Crucial to this debate will be you becoming aware of what happened at fire and really establishing where your sympathies lie. Watch the following documentaries to get your head around what happened. 

VIDEO 

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81035279

https://the-eye.eu/Fyre.Fraud.2019.1080p.Web.x264-Archivist.mp4

WRITTEN ARTICLE LINKS 

https://eventory.cc/blog/why-it-was-a-disaster-fyre-festival-what-happened-what-went-wrong/

https://www.bustle.com/p/did-fyre-festival-ticket-holders-get-their-money-back-their-fights-not-over-yet-15827388 

https://twitter.com/TMZ/status/858844693668298753

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/dec/20/fyre-festival-i-paid-4000-to-go-its-fair-game-to-make-fun-of-me

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/apr/28/bahamas-drama-luxury-fyre-festival-turns-into-chaos

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