In final display of public ignominy, judge places Fyre Festival in bankruptcy

Like a boy who flew too close to the sun while wearing an Izod polo shirt, the collapse of the Fyre Festival will live on in myth, a symbol of upscale outdoor-concert hubris laid low by ignorance and, um, wire fraud. The aborted festival, which stranded hundreds of wealthy idiots in a mosquito-ridden wasteland of Mad Max-like proportions in the Bahamas, will be synonymous with disastrous arrogance married to a total lack of organizational skills, planning, and even competent decision-making at the highest levels of its company. If only we had some sort of current analogous situation to use as a stand-in for that state of affairs.

And now, driving the last Red Bull-fueled nail into the wristband-wearing coffin of Fyre Festival LLC’s miserably short life, Rolling Stone reports a judge has placed the company in bankruptcy. A suit filed in July by three of the more than 20 people who loaned the festival upwards of $4 million sought to place the company in chapter seven bankruptcy in order to find out where their share of those contributions—approximately $530,000—disappeared to, and whether any of it could be recovered. (Presumed answers: “Sexy Instagram photos” to the former, and “Not a snowball’s chance in hell” to the latter.) The judge ordered Fyre Festival LLC to prepare documents accounting for its debts and finances. The company did not contest the ruling, likely because it is already sitting in a bar somewhere, drunkenly boasting that it used to know Ja Rule.