FYRE FESTIVAL FOR KIDS
Strap in folks for I have story about a festival I ALMOST worked at many years ago that essentially turned out to be a massive scam akin to Fyre Fest only it was aimed at families.
And believe me when I say this tale has a killer twist ending.
THREAD
I met with the EO to discuss details & from the off he seemed a bit off. Not my kind of guy.
https://t.co/9qT8lOqq1m
And then it started to get weird.
2 weeks from the festival I sent him an email saying we were out.
I was blown away by the call. Madness. He was very angry.
I stood my ground but it was agreed we would do the festival & I would sit it out. Obviously the upfront payment never happened.
A complete shitshow. Worse than you could imagine. Loads of the acts on the bill weren't booked, there was barely any staff to tell people what was going on, tickets were vastly overpriced, the camping was awful, the bouncy castles weren't inflated...
Their facebook page was flooded with complaints...
We didn't get paid. Most of the venders didn't get paid. Families wanted refunds. And the EO vanished.
Well believe it or not before Xmas I saw the EO's name pop up in the newspapers! He was back in Ireland.
Was he a changed man who now realised the error of his ways? Had he returned to atone for Wonderfest 2014?
Here's the story I saw his name in:
https://t.co/ovXWZ9Jyrt
And that is the story of Wondefest 2014 aka Fyre Fest for Kids
In summary: I don't think this guy should be getting HSE contracts.
More from Culture
I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
