fyre festival is going well

It's baffling, yeah. I cannot detect an iota of his alleged 'charisma'

Seems completely out of his depth at all times

agreed that was the most odd thing, he seemed like, I dunno, some guy at a frat that guy in because of his dad and tries to hard to be cool

i watched it over the weekend.
he looked and acted significantly differently when he was being interviewed compared to the photos/anecdotes of him during the buildup to the fiasco
he had clearly lost weight and cleaned up his hair (and got some new boots) and he spoke with the disingenuously contrite phoniness of someone who lives by the philosophy of "act first, apologize later" (which seems very much in character from what i could tell)

what a creep. i felt sorta bad for his girlfriend, she seemed nice but pretty clueless.

he also appeared to be drunk/drinking in pretty much every scene prior to the festival

yeah if i had to guess i would guess he stopped drinking -- his skin/face looked much clearer/less ruddy & bloated + he had lost weight

Apocalypse Now:Hearts of Darkness doc :: Netflix:Hulu

OTM xpost about the Hulu one being way too heavy handed on the stock clips and things like actually filming someone searching for 'luxury villas' on amazon. It's like Ben Stiller character in Reality Bites directed it.

Lol at these last two posts

quite fitting, then!

It's baffling, yeah. I cannot detect an iota of his alleged 'charisma'

Seems completely out of his depth at all times

The 'charisma' of grifters like this seems to amount to an ability to bullshit others into believing they can get hold of unlimited funding - which they then obtain through running Ponzi scemes etc, for a limited while anyway. Money talks and bullshit walks, as the sage Bobbi Fleckman put it, although it's probably the other way around in this case.

The psychologist towards the end of the Hulu doc made the good point that con artists just can't stop. It's compulsive behaviour. No doubt this dude will start all over again one way or another in a few years when he's out, and a lifetime of pyramid scemes and flagrant scams awaits. Until he gets caught out and hauled back into jail, of course.

What else does he know how to do?

water guy kinda sounds like jeff goldblum

The guy is obv a douche, pretty much all the interviewees talking about his magnetic pull are... also obv douches, which may explain why they were taken in idk

Yeah. Feel like ILX0rs don’t really intersect with his target audience. We might be taken in by other angles though, remember Lunagate.

I didn’t realise the Netflix doc was made by the ppl who made the promo btw, I was actually thinking it was pretty skilfully edited to make maximum fun of “fuck Jerry” lol. I haven’t seen the Hulu one but nothing presented here seemed any more self-serving than just about any of the testimony from anyone else. It was funny how some of them were trying to get the audience not just to see them as innocent dreamers but actually to feel aggrieved on their behalf that some internet posters made fun of them - as many people have commented passim the thing that makes this such a heartwarming tale is that everyone involved is the actual worst

Yeah. Feel like ILX0rs don’t really intersect with his target audience. We might be taken in by other angles though, remember Lunagate.

I feel like the douche factor in every aspect of life would be drastically reduced if we just started banning cameras from places.

Some of the “influencers” and attendees were honestly like sketch characters

you don't have to have a silver tongue or some sort of physical charisma to *build* charisma and that's kind of lost across the coverage and documentaries because all of the alluring bits of the puzzle are either alluded to or shown as part of the grift

the whole vibe reminds me of people who see bottle service as cool. which, to an extent, it is -- you're really allocating space in part of a club for your group, and buying everyone drinks at the same time without having to keep ordering. if you're genuinely rich or a celebrity who would get bothered a lot, it's a useful service. if you're a normal schlub, it's an extravagance and people wonder why the fuck you're in there spending a zillion dollars when drinks are a lot cheaper in the normal part of the bar

so if you value the perception of affluence and like being catered to -- your own space, better service, jumping some perceived queue, then the guy who offers that to you could seem cool. and if he's friendly and welcoming, even if he's kind of schlubby himself, then maybe you roll with it

and that's basically Billy McFarland's entire grift! the fake social access card and the attached parties at the office, the whole vibe, it's all just bottle service. and since he had this crowd there, he was able to sell the idea he was genuine to investors. well, not very well

I kept thinking of the dickhead entrepreneur bro who hangs around with aziz ansari’s character in parks & rec

The Magnises townhouse was pretty LOL.

I kept thinking of the dickhead entrepreneur bro who hangs around with aziz ansari’s character in parks & rec

the Hulu doc uses two clips of Entertainment 720

I probably said it before, but selling an entire music festival as if it's the premium tier crap that's basically music festival bottle service (semi-private accommodations, access to an area to watch near the stage just for you) makes absolutely no sense unless you're insanely rich, because the elaborate stages and number of acts are paid off of the tens of thousands of average person tickets, not the tens or hundreds of boutique concert villa people

the reveal in the hulu doc (only one I've watched) that the festival itself was a loan-rolling grift for him to get his app business off the ground isn't surprising, although it's an extreme overreach on the part of a guy who never really pulled anything off. his entire m.o. was to keep grifting higher and larger, and I really think he never understood the numbers or business on where he was reaching

if you're rich enough to try to book Beyonce via an app, you don't need an app. you have people who reach out directly and book Beyonce

I guess if there are like, a few hundred Gaddafis left out there and they really like using their phones to buy shit he'd have a market

No doubt this dude will start all over again one way or another in a few years when he's out

Why wait that long?

https://youtube/vop_XdfFPts

in other news, Billy's eastern european model (ex?) girlfriend's instagram account is private but apparently adds nearly anyone

no huge lols in there unfortunately

mh OTM

only seen the netflix doc, but there's definitely a "you can't cheat an honest man" thing going on w/everyone that got sucked up into this

I'll try that again..

https://youtube/vop_XdfFPts

Oh fuck it.

the Hulu doc uses two clips of Entertainment 720

he made it pretty far for a guy whose only idea was to sell the idea of access without ever providing anyone any access

unless a few people getting the wrong Hamilton tickets minutes before the show directly from the company owner counts

Many of the talking heads in the Netflix doc, when seen in profile, had a man bun. Red flag right there.

I liked that one yoga teacher guy, maybe because he vaguely reminds me of a friend of mine, not sure if he had a man bun, but yeah.

Re mh’s convincing analysis: maybe the guy’s schlubbiness actually broadened his appeal.

Yoga guy totally had a man bun. You didn't even have to see his profile to know.

There was a thing about how Elizabeth Holmes kept her hair and makeup kind of schlubby on purpose in order to be taken seriously and gain trust.

Yerac, have you read the Carryrou book on Theranos/Holmes? what a trip

No, I haven't . Only just the articles that came out after. The thing about her voice was hilarious.

What about her voice? Was there some kind of Lauren Bacall thing going on where she intentionally lowered it?

Yep.

Apparently it's going to made into a movie with Jennifer Lawrence playing Holmes.

Feel like what I read implies that movie has already been shot and will be finished this year.

No maybe not, just in development sorry.

Half an hour into the Hulu one, the millennialsplaining is fucking unbearable

It is over the top. I started laughing when there was a stock clip of whack a mole.

originally I was going to say that Theranos was a different type of grift, but in a way... no

there was actual capital invested in equipment and r&d but the core part of the grift was still telling people there was a product that never existed while trying to keep it rolling as long as possible without even trying to find a viable plan b

only instead of ja rule, theranos had a board with like... former high level government officials.

honestly, ja rule is probably more credible than henry kissinger though

kissinger never contributed anything as good as "holla holla" to this world

I don't think he would've gotten as far without Ja Rule.

henry kissinger has never jumped on the mic with fat joe (afaik)

Wasn't Theranos more a case of trying to dress up a pig, to continue marketing a real product that was unfortunately being proven with each successive test/trial to be less useful than hoped. Not conceived as a con, more morphed into one