Whether Fyre Festival—the three-day musical festival in the Bahamas that was pitched as a luxury playground for the rich and easily influenced but ended up more like a rusty jungle gym—was a success or not depends on whether you believe in the concept of “bad press.” On the one hand, a lot more people know what Fyre Festival is now than they did last week. On the other, they all picture a flaming dumpster every time the words are invoked.
But one place where the Fyre Festival continues to get lit is in the courts, where class-action lawsuits are popping like bottles of Cristal at the club, fam. Following the $100 million lawsuit filed against festival co-founders Ja Rule and Billy McFarland on Sunday, Pitchfork reports on a second complaint filed yesterday in L.A. County Superior Court, alleging that Fyre Festival defrauded attendees by paying social-media celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski to promote the festival online. “Social media ‘influencers’ made no attempt to disclose to consumers that they were being compensated for promoting the Fyre Festival,” personal injury attorney John Girardi writes in the complaint.
If the concept of celebrities getting paid to shill products on social media is novel to the plaintiffs, then we have some bad news about those meal-replacement shakes. (It’s like, does Khole Kardashian even drink Fit Tea?) Regardless, they may have a case, as the FTC does deem disclosure “appropriate” when someone is compensated for promoting a product online.