Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Tolentino begins this essay by diving into the story of Billy McFarland, the founder of Fyre Media, who had previously created a fraudulent promotion business. She describes the planning of his ill-conceived 2017 Fyre Festival. The timeline was far too short to pull off an event for 10,000 people, as intended; there was no location scheduled. However, the company began selling tickets to the event anyway. By the week before the event, McFarland ran out of money. Performers hadn't been paid and pulled. The event was a disaster, with charter flights not appearing and those who arrived at the site finding disaster-relief-style tents, wet mattresses, and awful food. McFarland was later arrested for fraud. Even still, that same summer, he sold $100,000 in tickets to events, some of which didn't even exist. Tolentino contextualizes this fraud as characteristic of the Trump era. After the 2008 financial crash, she writes, we have also seen the positioning of wealth as progressive for feminists, the disruption of companies like Uber and Amazon, reality TV, Facebook, high college tuition, and historic economic equality.

Under the heading "The Crash," Tolentino then dives deeper into the 2008 financial crisis. The crash was caused by the inflation of the housing market and its subsequent collapse.