LimeWire, once known as the filesharing service where you could illegally download music and risk hearing the dulcet tones of Bill Clinton insisting he “did not have sexual relations with that woman,” has outbid Ryan Reynolds to acquire Fyre Festival. In the immortal words of Jemima Kirke, what the hell, sure. It’s just about as random and needless as any other news item in 2025.
This pairing makes a certain sort of sense as Fyre Fest pivoted to streaming earlier this year, though the new owners are a little vague about what they plan to do with it. A press release boasts a “reimagined vision for Fyre” that “expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences, community, and surprise.” LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr said, “Fyre became a symbol of hype gone wrong, but it also made history. We’re not bringing the festival back — we’re bringing the brand and the meme back to life. This time with real experiences, and without the cheese sandwiches.” COO Marcus Feistl reiterated that LimeWire is “here to own the meme and do it right” by pairing “cultural relevance with real execution.”
Executing what is anyone’s guess. Brothers Julian and Paul Zehetmayr bought LimeWire in 2022 and turned it into an NFT service. As NFTs seem to be a marriage of crypto and memes, perhaps it’s no surprise they’d be interested in Fyre Festival and Billy McFarland’s various shenanigans. His last was selling the brand on eBay for around $250,000 in July, which was lower than he’d like, but he did at least find the then-undisclosed new ownership “funny.”
