SCAMMERS

Which Fyre Festival Memes Are Better: The Actual Calamity or the Documentaries?

Who among us has not been hustled, scammed, bamboozled?


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When the Fyre Festival went off the rails, the ill-fated, scammy event and its accompanying catered sliced bread provided ample fodder for memes. “Straight Up Savage,” Teen Vogue described them. “It’s All the Internet Can Talk About,” claimed Bustle.

Well, now there are not one but two documentaries about the garbage fire that was the Fyre Festival—one by Hulu in a, to quote Teen Vogue, “savage” move to scoop Netflix, the distributor behind the second documentary—here to revitalize the good memes. There have been reports that both documentaries are, in their own ways, ethically compromised: Hulu reportedly paid Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland $250,000 for his appearance in its documentary (though the streaming service denies this), while Netflix’s documentary was produced, in part, by Jerry Media, which also handled promotions for the festival. With the release of the two films, the memes are once again rising to the surface. #FyreFraud is back.

Some of these memes riff on the idea of competing documentaries—which is more authoritative? or better? or scammier?—while others take clips and GIFs from the films (like the “fully prepared to suck his dick” events planner, who has become an Internet hero) and add appropriate commentary. A few viewers have run with the two documentaries and demanded more.

And then there’s Ja Rule. The Fyre Festival cofounder has seemingly been unable to tear himself away from Twitter since the release of the warring documentaries; he’s been retweeting and responding to critics on social media while issuing the occasional defense. “I love how ppl watch a doc and think they have all the answers,” he wrote Sunday. He noted the ethical implications of both documentaries, writing, “I have receipts!!!” But perhaps most meme-able of all was a tweet he posted in the middle of the day on Sunday, in which he wrote, “I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, led astray!!!” Just think of all the memes that can come from that—and see a few of the best, below.