Fraud as the Lubricant of American Life
By 
I for one will never understand how Donald Trump rose to prominence as a figure in American political life:
Billy McFarland‘s stint in prison for fraud gave him the time to churn out a 50-page business plan to revive Fyre Festival — and now you can buy tickets.
In a YouTube video posted Sunday, the convicted con artist officially announced Fyre Festival II, set to take place in the Caribbean sometime at the end of 2024. The specific dates, location, and festival lineup have not been revealed, but tickets are currently on sale starting at $499 and going up to $7,999, per the festival website.
“This is a big day,” McFarland says in the video, sporting Airpods and a plush white robe. “It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here, and it really all started during a seventh-month stint in solitary confinement. I wrote out this 50-page plan of how it would take this overall interest and demand in Fyre and how it would take my ability bring people from around the world together to make the impossible happen.”
This feels like a meta-fraud, built upon layers of ironic distance and the sense that those who missed out on the first fraudulent festival somehow failed to experience one of the pivotal moments of our degraded post-modern age. Anyway, the kids today are morons, much like their parents and grandparents, so there’s every possibility that Billy McFarland will walk away with a windfall.