Billy McFarland, who we once referred to as the patron saint of millennial con men, is back with his latest (and probably lamest) con: A personal memoir about his life and the failure of the Fyre Festival. According to AV Club, McFarland has already completed the memoir, but ran into exactly the sort of problems you’d expect an inveterate liar and con man to run into in terms of releasing it.
McFarland is still near the beginning of his six year prison sentence, which he received in conjunction with a number of criminal lawsuits stemming from the disastrously botched and criminally negligent Fyre Festival. As any of us who watched the two competing documentaries on Hulu or Netflix—or indeed, anyone who existed online when this all went down—is aware, the festival was so poorly planned and executed that they allowed thousands of people to travel to a small Bahamian island that was completely unequipped for the visitors, let alone a major music festival. Most festival stages and accommodations were never even built, but promoters like McFarland let people show up and get trapped on the island all the same.
According to McFarland—and we’re going to remind you here that this guy lies constantly and compulsively—the memoir, titled Promythus: The God of Fyre, explores the “raw” story of the festival, outside of what was already uncovered by the dueling documentaries. Somehow, we get the feeling that McFarland just might characterize himself as a tragic hero in all of this. He even apparently claims that the festival will “happen again”—perhaps in five-plus years, when he’s out of prison.
Before we go any further, I have to point out that even this memoir title is terrible. Does “Promythus” not feel like it should have “Promytheus”? And are we forgetting that Prometheus is a titan, and not a god? I’ll not stand idly by and let you screw with Greek mythology, Mr. McFarland, thank you very much.
According to AV Club, freelance editor Josh Raab was sought out by McFarland to edit/ghostwrite the book from McFarland’s notes, which would “chronicle his career from the first investment in a now-shuttered start-up back in 2011 to the FBI paying him a visit days after the festival imploded.” Raab eventually left the project—what a shock, to find out that someone found it hard to work with Billy McFarland—leaving the memoir up in the air, but we somehow have no doubt that it will end up getting published eventually, while the millennial schadenfreude is still hot, or at least tepid.
If Promythus: The God of Fyre ever sees the light of day, we’ll be right there to tell you not to buy it, because Billy McFarland doesn’t ever need to make another dollar.