WINNIPEG — After watching both new documentaries about the infamous Fyre Fest, as well as copious other reporting, local barista Geoff Markson now wishes he could attend the disastrous music festival.
“Look, I know how this sounds,” said Markson, 28, referring to his admiration for the notoriously under-planned 2017 music festival which saw hundreds of attendees stranded, as well as millions in unpaid bills. “But the more I watched, the more FOMO I started to feel. Who knew?
Markson admits that he devoured all of the Fyre Fest media for the same reason as everybody else: “to revel in the schadenfreude of watching attractive Instagram influencers get fleeced by a pathetic huckster”. Yet despite voraciously consuming several exposes, podcasts, news articles, both documentaries, and finally the ensuing think pieces about the documentaries, Markson still somehow claims that Fyre Fest “sounds sorta rad”.
He bafflingly elaborated, “I mean, I understand that Fyre Fest was a fraud. But it sounds like it would have been fun, if it was at all possible to pull off, which it absolutely was not.”
Friends acknowledge that this is not the first time Markson has proven succeptiple to blatantly misleading advertising. “First he was all about Kony 2012, and then he really wanted to enroll in Trump University – and that was after it went bankrupt,” explained longtime friend Sarah Weir. “I kept making sure he knew that Fyre Fest was a massive scam, and he insisted he did, but then three minutes later he’d be like ‘We should go to Burning Man this year’. Like, I’m worried about him.”
In spite of understanding that Fyre Fest is now synonymous with the empty, predatory nature of influencer culture and viral marketing, Markson has begun following several notable instagram celebrities. “Oh man, that beach Kylie’s on looks really nice,” he mused, despite being 100% intellectually aware that Kylie Jenner had been paid thousands of dollars to post the photo.
In addition to watching over 25 hours of content portraying Fyre Fest’s as a cautionary tale, Markson has now begun to worry friends further with ambitious plans of his own. “Maybe the problem wasn’t the lack of money, time, or expertise. Maybe they just needed to want it more,” Markson was overheard saying to a customer at the Coffee Bean where he works. At press time, Markson has yet been unsuccessful in contacting jailed Fyre Fest organizer Billy McFarland.
Meanwhile Manitoba RCMP are warning local residents not to invest any large sums of money with Markson, or believe him if he claims to be “totally close friends with Ja Rule”.
