Does the Fyre Festival Depict all that is Wrong with Instagram?

Have you seen Fyre on Netflix, a documentary about the disastrous Fyre festival?

It surprises me how many people have watched it and shared their conclusions as “that’s it, I’ve had it with Instagram”, “Instagram / social media is just terrible”, “don’t believe anything on Instagram”….I even heard “Instagram is just evil”!

It was a big scam, lots of people were conned and the organizer deserved to go to prison. It was a scam largely marketed on Instagram. But here’s the thing, is it Instagram’s fault, does it depict ‘all that is wrong with Instagram’?

No. Big scams have been going on forever. For as long as there have been ways to reach mass audiences, there have been bad people finding ways to exploit that and innocent people scammed.

How many thousands of people have been scammed by telemarketing? Conclusion, don’t trust everyone who calls you. Or, are phones evil?

How many thousands of people have been scammed by door-to-door salespeople? Conclusion, don’t trust everyone who knocks on your door. Or, are doors evil?!

How many thousands of people have been scammed by postal campaigns? Conclusion, don’t trust everything through your letterbox. Or, is mail evil?

Then there is the issue of influencer marketing and attraction marketing. Well attraction marketing has been going on forever too. I can’t remember the last time I went on YouTube and wasn’t shows an ad where someone has hired a big house and Lamborghini for a few hours and tried to convince me to join some sort of ‘let’s make lots of money’ MLM scheme.

We shouldn’t believe everything we see online…yes, especially Instagram. But that is not new. We know we should not be gullible but people do, and will continue, to fall victim. Can the platforms do more, yes, I’m sure they can always try to do more but in some cases, like Fyre, not really sure what they could have done.

As for influencer marketing, it’s unregulated and I wish there was more that could be done. If you receive payment in cash or in kind for promoting something to a large audience, you should do due diligence with regards to what you promote and there should be some consequences if you don’t. But, I don’t know how this would be enforced. You should at least have to disclose you are being paid for the endorsement but again, not sure how this would play out in reality and in the case of Fyre, would that have made a difference?

I guess my conclusion is gloomy. Scammers scam using any platform available. We shouldn’t believe all that we see. But Fyre is no more Mark Zuckerberg’s fault than it is Postman Pat’s for all the postal mail scams of time gone by.

Thanks for reading!

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