Sarah Graves had high hopes as she began her trek across the American frontier with family and newly minted husband in 1846. They were following the promise of a wonderful life in California, then part of Mexico, a promise made to them by a man called Lansford Hastings. He was an entrepreneur and author of The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, who had a vested interest in “whitening” the area so as to cause a soft land grab.
Daniel James Brown’s book The Indifferent Stars Above beautifully paints a rich story of the family’s journey, but I was plagued by an overall sense of dread while reading even the happier and lighter moments. For you see, I know how this story ends. Sarah will see her husband die on this trip and get eaten by her fellow starving travellers in a snowy Nervada mountain pass. Hastings's untested California shortcut suggestion in his guide would cost the Donner-Reed party 39 lives, with many survivors, including children, having to eat the dead to live.
The same dread was echoed when watching Neflix’s new sensational documentary Fyre; The Greatest Party that Never Happened. The movie starts with a story about an app that shows immense promise and devolves into the infamous saga of masterful fraud, abandoned rich millennials, and the saddest, most expensive cheese sandwich in the world.
Fyre was originally intended to be a celebrity version of Uber, where a fan or event organiser with enough money could book a big-name artist legitimately without having to go through the often overcomplicated network of middlemen who each demand a slice. It was a great idea; born from the fraught efforts of entrepreneur Billy McFarland, who founded Magnises, a credit card and high-end social club for millennials, to book Fyre’s other co-founder, rapper Ja Rule.
The guidelines, which are open for comment until February 24, read that if an influencer is paid to post, or if goods are exchanged, all posts associated with those deals must be obviously identifiable with appropriate hashtags, such as #Ad, or #Sponsored so as not to deceive or confuse the viewer.
In an effort to find a smart way to launch the app, a festival was imagined. They found Pablo Escobar’s old island in the Bahamas and wrangled the world’s biggest models to go have a super fun time. They shot the fun to create an incredible promo video, promising big-name artists, luxury villas, the finest food and drink, millions in hidden treasure, and social interaction with social media elite. Next they had influencers post nothing save an orange square on Instagram with a link to the promo video and a website that sold packages that included flights and luxury villa accommodation costing up to $12,000 and VIP yachts clocking in at about $250,000.
On the strength of the orange square and video campaign alone, they sold 95% of the tickets in 48 hours. What later transpires is a cringe-inducing hour of various people on the ground describing the nightmare of trying to make this impossible pre-sold dream a reality. There is even a moment where a man describes how he was pressured to go give a Bahamian government official a blowjob to release containers of Evian water from customs rather than pay $175,000 the organisers didn’t have. The entire mangled mess of lies reaches a climax when thousands of festival-goers arrive to water drenched disaster relief tents, no electricity and no way home. Needless to say, Lord of the Flies levels of barbarity erupt.
McFarland is currently in prison and will be for the next six years for defrauding investors out of $27m, but not before he came up with a new luxury scam using the Fyre Festival mailing list called NYC VIP Access — while out on bail. The fallout caused the US Federal Trade Commission to crack down on influencers to clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationships to brands when promoting or endorsing products through social media.
In an era when we are increasingly seen, how is it that this level of deception is even still possible? It’s all thanks to the sheer power of social media’s perceived authenticity. This idea of authenticity is at the crux of the social media economy and the multibillion-dollar marketing scheme that surrounds it is. Over the years we have seen that millennials and the subsequent generations are not responding to traditional advertising tropes anymore. People don’t care what the Camel man thinks, but do want to hear “the truth” from regular people they can relate to — albeit through a very filtered lens.
As such, in the aftermath of the festival fiasco people felt that those who posted the orange square had personally legitimised the festival, and in so doing were part of the fabric that made the festival all the more alluring and legitimate. One lawsuit went as far as to state that the various influencers, including Kendall Jenner, who was reportedly paid $250,000 for her endorsement, acted “with negligent misrepresentation, fraud and breach of contract” for failing to provide the festival experience as promised and for “misrepresentations” that caused people to purchase tickets.
But to what extent can we hold these people truly responsible, or is it the modern-day version of Hansie Cronje’s “the devil made me do it”? Some version of the truth is usually a quick Google search away, but we just want to believe that our heroes would never lie to us.
Closer to home, SA’s Advertising Regulatory Board is asking similar questions and has drawn up policy whereby SA brands and influencers will be required to take more responsibility. The guidelines, which are open for comment until February 24, read that if an influencer is paid to post, or if goods are exchanged, all posts associated with those deals must be obviously identifiable with appropriate hashtags, such as #Ad, or #Sponsored so as not to deceive or confuse the viewer. “Social Media advertising must not contain deceptive, false or misleading content, including deceptive claims, offers or business practices,” the draft reads.
Whether it be a “cultural moment created from a blend of music, art and food,” or a quicker route to California, the mediums may change but snake oil salesmen are stubbornly consistent. In a sentiment stolen from Tamsen Donner, the only one that was apprehensive of the advice that would ultimately doom the Donner-Reed party to its cannibalistic fate: be wary of “merely another selfish adventurer”.
• McKeown is a gadget and tech trend writer.
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