There are moments in history where society collectively loses its mind, pulls out a credit card, and says, “Yeah, this seems legit.” In 2012, it was a YouTube video asking you to stop a war criminal by wearing a rubber bracelet and yelling “KONY!” into the void. In 2017, it was paying thousands of dollars to eat cheese on soggy bread while sleeping in FEMA tents on an island owned by Ja Rule. Kony 2012 and Fyre Festival—two cosmic flops, two passion projects built on hype, hashtags, and hope. Both promised to change the world. Both delivered disappointment, panic, and memes. They were the internet’s Icaruses, except instead of flying too close to the sun, they flew directly into it, blindfolded, with a GoPro strapped to their heads.
Kony 2012 had a mission: make Joseph Kony famous so people would pressure governments to capture him. Noble, right? And how would we achieve this? Through social media, glow-in-the-dark maps, and a very intense guy yelling at the camera like he was pitching a startup to save the world. Meanwhile, Fyre Festival had its own mission: to host the most luxurious music festival in history with models, yachts, and gourmet food. They delivered none of that, but they did give us the iconic cheese sandwich photo, which is more culturally valuable than anything Ja Rule has released since 2002.
Both campaigns had cult leaders. Kony had Jason Russell, the invisible child whisperer who told everyone the solution to decades of violence was posting Instagram stories. Fyre had Billy McFarland, the visionary entrepreneur who thought he could invent a luxury island festival using PowerPoint and fraud. Both men were so consumed by their own hype that they imploded—Jason with a public breakdown involving nudity and traffic, Billy with federal charges and a Netflix documentary. Truly, the internet giveth and the internet taketh away.
And the real kicker? People wanted to believe. In both cases, thousands of young people bought the dream. Kony 2012 had teens plastering posters on suburban stop signs while never learning where Uganda actually was. Fyre had influencers flying to a gravel pit in the Bahamas expecting to see Blink-182 rise from the ocean like Poseidon. When it all fell apart, the internet shrugged, laughed, and moved on. No refunds, no justice, just a new TikTok trend and a vague sense of shame.
The real difference? Kony was never caught, but Billy McFarland was—and he’ll probably still throw another party when he gets out. But in their own ways, both Kony 2012 and Fyre Festival were masterpieces of modern performance art. They were cautionary tales disguised as movements. They showed us what happens when you mix ambition with delusion and give it Wi-Fi. And above all, they proved one undeniable truth: if the internet gets excited enough, it will believe literally anything.