Fyre Festival Organizer: 'Let’s Just Do It and Be Legends'

Former Fyre Festival organizer Chloe Gordon wrote a piece for 'The Cut' detailing why the event would inevitably end up as a punchline.

With the pure struggle that is the aborted Fyre Festival trending for all the wrong reasons, the question of why no one saw the proverbial handwriting on the wall has been raised. According to at least one former Fyre Festival organizer, there were dozens of red flags leading up to the supposedly luxurious event turning into a light version of Lord of the Flies.

Chloe Gordon penned a piece for The Cut with the ominous title, “I Worked at Fyre Festival. It Was Always Going to Be a Disaster.” Based on Gordon’s claims, things started off poorly and got exponentially worse.

“Flying in, the water looked beautiful — but I was almost immediately warned not to go near it because of a rampant shark problem,” Gordon wrote. “That was an omen I regrettably missed.”

The “rampant shark problem” was compounded by sandflies, and a gravel covered lot that apparently looked worse than the wind-battered tents angered Fyre Festival attendees posted to various social media accounts Friday. Gorden added there were ongoing concerns about paying the performing artists, no accommodations in place, no stage, and little to no budget provided to “build a festival village from scratch.”

Event planners with the foresight to see how such a poorly planned event would ultimately pan out advised rolling everyone’s tickets over to 2018, since an estimated $50 million would be needed to pull off the Fyre Fest as advertised. Instead, one of the Fyre Festival marketing executives had a counter.

According to Gordon, an unnamed marketing exec waived off the multiple warnings and said, “Let’s just do it and be legends, man.”

So yeah, the Fyre Festival did become legendary, but not in the way organizers hoped. Roughly six weeks before all the memes including struggle sandwiches and imagery from Castaway and Lost began trending, Gordon said she tendered her resignation and flew back to New York.

Being told she could continue to help organize the event with a rumored 33 percent pay cut likely didn’t help matters. For some laughs, and Gordon’s complete account (including Ja Rule giving the most Ja Rule celebratory toast ever) head over to The Cut and read Gordon’s piece.

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