The Cutprice Guignol

Failed festivals of various flavours have been a bread-and-butter staple of the social media gossip train for the better part of the last decade: from DashCon and the iconic ballpit, to the disaster of the Fyre Festival, to this year’s hilarious Willy Wonka Experience and stripper-pole Bridgerton Ball, nothing brings the internet together like a tragically-oversold event and the disaster it actually turns out to be.

So perhaps it makes sense that the latest example of this trend overlaps with one of the current biggest forces in popular media: Taylor Swift’s Era tour. The Eras tour, if you’ve somehow managed to dodge absorbing knowledge of this pop cultural behemoth for the last eighteen months or so, is singer-songwriter Swift’s titanic sixth tour, with a three-and-a-half hour setlist spanning the distinct stages of her career and her various albums. At the time of writing, it’s still ongoing (slated to finish in early December this year); it’s the highest-grossing tour of all time, pulling in more than a billion dollars in profit, and has spanned dozens of cities over more than 130 shows since it kicked off in March 2023 in Glendale, Arizona.

Amongst the thousands who turned out to see Swift on the first night of the Eras tour was Rebecca Fox. Fox, a self-described “super fan” of Swift, was determined to see the very first Eras tour show – the only problem was how much it cost for her to make the trek between her home in New Orleans and Phoenix, Arizona, where she’d be staying for the night of the concert. With less than twenty-four hours, Fox found herself frustrated with the lack of opportunity to connect with other Swifties, bemoaning that she “didn’t get to trade bracelets. I didn’t get to meet anybody. I didn’t get to take a photo outside the stadium”.

She wasn’t the only one who faced financial hurdles to seeing Swift on tour; fans complained of rampant price-gouging from hotels and ticket sellers alike, with the average price for a ticket that first Glendale show allegedly reaching a staggering $700. Fox, determined to do her bit to give other Swift fans the experience she felt she had missed out on, started to put together a plan.

It wasn’t the first time that Fox had decided to approach an ambitious venture before – according to her website, in 2013, she started DIY boutique (which she claimed was “the first of its kind in the nation”) where guests would craft together, a reflection of Fox’s childhood interest in making friendship bracelets. When the store folded under financial pressure, because, according to Fox, “people didn’t understand it yet”, she entered the film and TV industry. In a 2015 interview with Stand In Central, Fox described herself as an aspiring writer and actor, with her most significant professional achievement at that stage standing in for Sandra Bullock on Our Brand is Crisis.

But, come 2023 and the SAG-AFRA strike that led to most TV shows and movies grinding their production to a halt, she was left without work. Seeking a new source of income, she began hosting trivia nights, where she would give out friendship bracelets. Eventually, her friendship bracelets overlapped with her die-hard Swift fandom, when, in the song You’re On Your Own, Kid, from 2022 Midnights, Swift implored listeners to “make the friendship bracelets”. Upon hearing the lyric, Fox said that she “knew what was going to happen and it’s safe to say I’ve never been more excited in my life”. From there, she began The Friendship Bracelet Project, a project focused on creating and exchanging friendship bracelets with serial numbers and other identifiers to allow for the creators to track their journeys, and the owners to learn their origins.

With the exchange of friendship bracelets serving as such a focal point for attendees of the Eras tour, and Swift apparently serving as such a major inspiration behind the project, it’s perhaps not a surprise that The Friendship Bracelet Project began hosting Taylor Swift-themed events over the course of 2024 – from a trivia game in May to Taylor Swift Skate Nights, Fox seemed to have tapped in to a fandom in the midst of its imperial era (pun fully intended).

Through contacts she had in New Orleans, she managed to deduce the rough timeline of Swift’s planned visit to the city, and booked a handful of hotel rooms in advance, hoping to save other Swift fans the price-gouging that had become such a problem over the course of the tour. Soon, though, as the three shows taking place over the 25th to the 27th October drew closer, her plans expanded, leading to her booking a total of 191 rooms at a hotel near the Caesar’s Superdome where the Eras shows would be held. As Swift fans began taking up her reserved rooms once tickets to the New Orleans Eras tour shows were released (at the cost of around $500 per room, according to Fox), Fox began to plan a full-blown convention from 24th-28th October, known as the Holiday House event, after Swift’s own Rhode Island home mentioned in her song The Last Great American Dynasty.

On The Friendship Bracelet Project website, various events, tickets, and discounts were on offer for those who wanted to join the Holiday House event – many of them featuring some Taylor Swift-centric pun (my personal favourite was Tayoga, which came with the descriptor “Namas-Tay, y’all!”), the events ranged from brunches to Swift-themed dance parties, from talent shows to pool parties, and, of course, a generous amount of friendship-bracelet making. It sounded like a pretty fun event for Swities looking to connect with their community ahead of their visit to the Eras tour – but, early on, prices began to raise eyebrows. All-inclusive tickets started at $550, with VIP tickets reaching up to more than $1000 dollars – not including hotel rooms or tickets to the tour itself. While she had made an effort in securing reasonably-priced rooms for other fans of the singer, Fox didn’t seem reluctant to charge a hefty premium for her own event.

Prior to the event kick-off, there were a few skirmishes in the Facebook group for the Holiday House event – some Swift fans had joined the group under the impression that it was a place for fans to share ideas for their visit to New Orleans, and Fox didn’t seem to take kindly to them asking for recommendations for events taking place at the same time as the Holiday House. “To think that we would plan all these events to say “don’t come to my brunch go to this other brunch at the same time that tipped off my idea and all of our event description and is literally doing the same thing at the same time with the same amenities” no…why would I do that? Why would someone ask? It’s beyond rude”. Other people with similar questions were met with blunt responses, and, while I don’t think it’s entirely unfair for an organiser to be annoyed about people asking for suggestions for other events on a page created specifically for theirs, her responses (“if you don’t like it, get out”) left a lot to be desired.

What raised most eyebrows in the Swift fandom, though, was the campaign that began to get her hands on the highly-vaunted 22 hat – a hat that Swift wears during her performance of the song 22, which is gifted to a member of the audience, most often a child facing serious illness. Fox claimed that her admins and moderators had begun the campaign, and, while she acknowledged that the hat normally went to “kids, and people who’ve had illnesses, and people who’ve had far more hardships” than she’d experienced, she did add that she’d been “admittedly broken-hearted for most of [her] life”, and made sure to share where she would be standing during the concert, just in case.

She shared a petition for her to get the hat on the Facebook page for the event, and offered free trivia night tickets to those signing the petition. When the parent of an ill child hoping to be gifted the hat at that particular concert shared their own petition, messages allegedly sent by Fox to the admins of the page remarked “I’m sorry everybody’s kid is cute. Everybody’s kid has problems. Every family has illness like fuck…I’m sorry but if you haven’t participated a day in this motherfucking group no we’re not gonna fucking help”.

Despite the high cost, and these issues, Swift fans were keen to secure rooms for the New Orleans Eras shows. In emails shared by those who booked these rooms (in which Fox quoted Taylor Swift’s song Blank Space “don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn you”), Fox appeared to be requesting a $25 fee per person, which would entitle purchasers to fill out a Google Form and land a place on a list for a hotel reservation (which they would have to then pay for themselves). By early October, Fox was lamenting the lack of participation from the 1300 people staying in the hotel block she had reserved, claiming only 20% were attending an additional paid event. A few days before the event kicked off, Fox made a post on the Facebook group revealing that she was around $20,000 out of pocket for the event, and requesting donations from attendees.

But, despite this, the Taylor train thundered out of the station, and the Holidy House event began. From day one, though, complaints began to roll in from guests regarding the events failing to live up to the lofty promises offered in their advertising.

The brunch, priced at $150, bore a suspicious resemblance to the continental breakfast offered at the hotel already – though it did, according to some guests, come with cupcakes with a Swift album-themed topper. The pool party, with tickets that went up to $75, was held at the hotel pool that guests could access for free, with a single balloon arch as decoration and a guest playing music from a small speaker. There was also no place for people not staying at the hotel to change into swimsuits. A signed guitar, that had been slated as a prize for one of the games taking place during the event, appeared to be nothing more than a picture. Parking was charged at $40-50, though attendees remarked that they could buy a ticket on-site for just $35. One attendee of the bracelet-making event described a silent, music-free room, an unticketed entrance, and volunteers who were putting together goodie bags for other events who were quick to dissuade confused guests that they might have been for them (“no! That’s not for you!”).

Over the course of the weekend, disgruntled attendees began sharing more of their experiences with Fox and the Holiday House hotel block. One wheelchair user claimed that Fox responded to her concerns about the accessibility of certain events with “I feel like nothing I do is good enough for you.”. A DJ, Kendall Burke AKA Warm Advice, shared that she had been in contact with Fox regarding working at the event, but Fox stopped responding to her messages. One potential vendor said that Fox asked for a fee of $450 to have a table to sell her wares at the convention – for reference, a convention with an expected 100,000 footfall charges at around $200.

Perhaps most egregious, though, were the claims that came from those who had initially booked the rooms but wanted to cancel their booking for one reason or another: as well as charging a $100 “restocking fee” (which was paid not to the The Friendship Bracelet Project LLC account, but to Fox’s personal one), Fox allegedly requested that they give up their Eras tour tickets to her as well. It was noted that Fox attended all three nights of the show in New Orleans, after initially suggesting she would only be attending one.

By 28th October, when the event had come to an ignominious close, and attendees had started sharing their stories on social media. One TikTok user, Julia (@jump4js), shared a video about the event that soon blew up on the app, and the situation exploded on social media, with many comparing it to the Fyre Festival scam – while Fox was initially silent on the matter, she eventually released a statement to the group’s Facebook page on 31st October.

In the statement, Fox acknowledged that “there’s still things that are totally my fault”, but that there were some “really, really big things that nobody knows about” that also impacted the disastrous event – most significantly, according to Fox, that the hotel overcharged her by $17,000 just three days before the event, all but wiping out her operating budget, for which she promised to post receipts (nearly two weeks later, she has not yet). “Believe me when I say that there are people purposely trying to take me down,” she continued. “And if you use your detective skills and go back weeks and weeks ago…you’ll find evidence.”. She remarked that she wanted “so badly to make the first Swiftie gathering a success” and that it “broke [her] heart that someone else is going to get to be the first person to pull this off”. She also requested that attendees stop requesting refunds through PayPal, claiming that it could get her PayPal shut down and that would cause refunds to take longer and be even more complex as a result.

The same day, Fox revealed that she had retained a lawyer who was currently out of the country, and she was waiting for her to return before she moved forward. At the moment, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said no complaints had been received related to the event. For my money, it’s clear this event failed dramatically to live up to expectations set by Fox and The Friendship Bracelet Project; while Fox seems set on claiming that it was a hotel bill outside of her control that led to this, if she truly did know several days in advance that her budget for the event had been decimated, it was up to her to mitigate expectations as a result of that. Whether her actions were cynically intentional or genuinely out of her hands or a mixture of both, there are clear questions remaining about what happened that weekend, and of Fox’s involvement in it.

Most of the conversation around the event has been in line with similar overhyped and oversold events from earlier this year, such as the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience or the Bridgerton Ball. Like those incidents, it’s worth noting that the majority of this story has unfolded via social media, screenshots, and comments – which are not easy to verify – and, as a result, this should be approached with the appropriate grain of salt it requires. Additionally, Fox mentioned in her statement that she had been receiving death threats and encouragements to suicide, neither of which are remotely appropriate reactions to her behaviour, and I hope I can make it very clear that I’m not trying to incite further harassment against her with this article.

But something that stood out to me about the particular incident was how it seemed to lean on the community has sprung up around Swift and her music, that’s only intensified since the Eras tour began – all of this started, after all, after Fox attended the first Eras tour show. The tour has served as a place for fans to come together and share their passion for Swift and her music – and, with its billion-dollar takings, has been a direct monetization of that fandom and community; while, obviously, the Eras tour did deliver on promises to fans, it’s not a surprise to see people with less organisational prowess banking on the community’s huge spending power. As the Eras tour draws to a close, it wouldn’t surprise me to see events like the one Holiday House claimed to be springing up as an attempt to fill the void left by the tour for Swifties looking to connect with other fans.

If you’re part of the Swiftie fandom, I would love to hear your opinions on this in the comments – are there any other examples of fan-run Swiftie events not living up to expectations you think we should be talking about, too?

More Writing on Internet History:

A Gay Girl In Damascus: Anatomy of a Hoax

Autassasinophilia, Fetish Forums, and the Early Internet: The Murder of Sharon Lopatka

The Hands Resist Him: Did eBay Auction a Haunted Painting?

The Sex Slave, the BDSM Blog, and the Murder: A Deep Dive into the Delia Day Case

Sources/Further Reading:

This fantastic Google Document put together by X users @foolishlysydni and @cherrie_teaa is an invaluable archive of comments from Facebook posts and other social media – any quotes not credited to another user came from screenshots in this document.

Investigating The Swiftie On Swiftie Crime That Is The New Orleans ‘Holiday House’ Fiasco by Fleurine Tideman

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(header image via Billboard)