Tragic Music Festival Disasters That Are Absolutely Heartbreaking

The line between incompetence and criminality can sometimes be a thin one indeed, although a court has decided that Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland was definitely on the criminal side of that equation. As BBC News explains, he's currently serving six years for his role in a music festival that never happened.

As Vanity Fair reported in 2017, McFarland had always been fascinated by wealth and celebrity, and desperately wanted to be a part of those worlds. However, his dreams exceeded his ability to carry them out, and he lived by the motto "Fake it 'til you make it." Nevertheless, his incompetence didn't stop him, and by 2016, he'd set upon the idea of holding the Fyre Festival in the Bahamas, in order to promote his festival-booking app, as Vice reported. To make a very long story short, the festival was to be headlined by Ja Rule, and was to feature wealthy celebrities and influencers partying it up in the Bahamas while scantily-clad waitresses handed out drinks.

But it was all a house of cards; McFarland had neither the time, the money, nor the connections to get the festival up and running, and soon planes full of concert-goers were arriving, finding only an empty beach, FEMA tents instead of luxury cabanas, and cheese sandwiches instead of gourmet catering. Some of the attendees had paid thousands for their worthless tickets. In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in the fraud.

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