Influencer marketing has long been a legal gray area, but recently settled celebrity lawsuits related to the Fyre Festival — a failed luxury musical festival — have definitely added some color to the debate. The idea for the Fyre Festival came from rapper Ja Rule and his business partner Billy McFarland, a 25-year-old CEO of a luxury concierge service. The duo created the event together and touted it as the world’s most expensive music festival. They’d also launched an attractive marketing campaign that included celebrity promotions by Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and other influencers. All the while, the organizers knew the Fyre Festival was doomed from the start. In lieu of a multiday, luxury experience, thousands of people were scammed and left stranded in the Bahamas instead. "[The organizers] had six to eight weeks to pull off something that should have taken close to a year," says Chris Smith, who directed a Netflix documentary on the festival. "But what was most surprising to me was going to the Bahamas and seeing the aftermath of what was left behind and the effect on the people there." The local economy was devastated. "They had engaged with so much of the local community to try and pull this off. There were hundreds of day laborers working," says Smith. "Fyre had such a high profile that I don't think anyone could have assumed that it wouldn't work out." As the Fyre Festival fell apart, Gregory Messer — the trustee in charge of overseeing the bankruptcy for Fyre Media — looked into the finances. He began to suspect that there had been “fraudulent transfers” between the founders and many of the event’s promoters, and he began to sue the celebrities and influencers that drove the hype behind the festival. For example, McFarland and Ja Rule reportedly paid Kendall Jenner over $275,000 to publish an Instagram post promoting the festival. Although Jenner denied liability, she did not disclose on the post that it was paid and sponsored. Messer’s attorney further argued that Jenner had not told her Instagram followers that she’d pulled out of the festival after learning of its disastrous problems. Although more legal parameters will likely spring up in the future to further define the limits of influencer marketing, this will certainly make any celebrity think twice about accepting money to promote events and brands. And that’s definitely for the best! The Fyre Festival’s Legal Fallout for Influencers Up in Flames
‘ Restoring Our Earth ’ Instead of Mitigating Damage
Earth Day came about in 1970 after 20 million people protested, calling for better environmental regulations. This kick-started the environmental movement that continues to this day. Now, every year on the anniversary of that demonstration (April 22), people celebrate Earth Day. The Earth Day Network, a nonprofit organization with a mission to “diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide,” chooses a theme for Earth Day each year. When the nonprofit announced that the theme for 2021 would be “Restore Our Earth,” the COVID-19 pandemic had been raging for a few months, and themes of restoration to the environment no doubt seemed appropriate. Everyone wanted to get back to normalcy — to have it restored. That said, however, the “Restore Our Earth” theme flew in the face of conventional wisdom about caring for the environment. Until recently, many defined environmental protection as merely a mitigation of the activities and behaviors that bring about environmental damage and climate change. The emerging mindset — that we should be focused not only on mitigation, but also a restoration of the world’s resources — makes many hopeful that we can repair environments that we’ve destroyed and prevent any harmful effects that environmental degradation might have on our health in the future. While the exact source of the coronavirus is still uncertain, scientists and other experts have called on global leaders to recognize this pandemic as a threat that knows no borders, and that if we want to prevent something like this from happening in the future, we have to take better care of the planet now. As we continue to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope that we won’t emerge from it without understanding the crucial connection between the health of our planet and our individual health. When we “Restore the Earth,” we restore life to our own bodies and to the bodies of our loved ones as well. THE THEME OF EARTH DAY 2021
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