The promoter of Fyre festival pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges on Tuesday, agreeing to serve up to a decade in prison for lying to investors and sending false documents. We look back at the time we sent our writer to the festival.

It was supposed to be the most exclusive, luxurious festival in the world. Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski and co enticing wanderlust millennials into a brand new festival on a private island in the Bahamas, which was organised by Ja Rule, of all people. It was pegged as a two fingers up to Coachella. Hashtags triumphantly emerged in the days leading up, from Fyre festival goers, featuring smug pictures expressing their excitement, alongside #Noachella. The over-saturated Californian music festival was old news, this was to be the year of Fyre - a music festival (in the loosest possible sense) which ostentatiously boasted a weekend package for the equivalent of a flat ($300,000 was the top-end option).

The most Instagrammable beaches laid waiting, yachts were to be people’s tents. This wasn’t going to be a humblebrag, this was a bellowing call to every social media follower. They’d be there living it up in paradise, while their friends and co-workers sadly looked on, vitamin D deprived, wishing they were them.

This was until I watched the whole thing unfold on Thursday night in Miami airport, waiting in vain for my flight to the island. It was like Castaway with Snapchat, Battle Royale with a Whatsapp group thread. Partying within the vicinity of a Kardashian or a Hadid and early morning yoga on the beach was feeling like a distant dream to many.

There were suspicions from the get go. At Miami airport a group of warm and friendly Californians in their early twenties invited me into their group immediately upon check-in. They were all nervous energy, excited and talkative as we went for a drink at the bar to pass the time. They knew nothing but were optimistic at this point. They’d paid $500 tickets before the line-up was announced. Jokingly they all kept shouting, “It’s going to be a disaster!” over the top of each other. At this point it was over rumours that the tents had no charging points.

“If we can’t Instagram it, what’s the point?” one girl told me straight-faced.

Everyone at the airport looked beautiful, hair was immaculately done, outfits were thought through. While kids were drinking more and more, trying out various Instagram poses for when they arrived and Snapchatting pictures of their wristbands, updates kept trickling in like a rolling news feed of chaos.

Blink 182, much to everyone’s surprise - maybe more that the band were still going - had pulled out. A frat boy named Adrian dressed in bold Hawaiian print with matching palm tree socks, and a personal trainer called Alec, told me they’d spent $8,000 just for a VIP table to see them. They were devastated. Money was uploaded onto wristbands like flashy Oyster cards, no cash was available or could be used on the festival grounds. Upon arrival at the airport, the Fyre concierge told guests that they should be adding more money to their wristbands - at least $300 a day, some had almost a grand on theirs.

Rumours were circulating that tents were on a first come, first serve basis. A flash storm had apparently wiped out most of the pop-up accommodation. No one knew for sure. No one from Fyre was there to be seen, no concierge service was picking up. Things were looking bad. Yet the kids at the bar were determined to make the most of it, insistent on having a good time no matter what - they’d taken time off work and flown all this way after all. One girl had even skipped college to be there, she was graduating soon but wanted this to be a blow-out.

As we waited for our private charter flight to the Exumas, hours passed by. All the representatives seemed to have vanished. Nobody knew what was going on. The more we waited, festival goers began to receive desperate pleas and distressed looking photos from their friends who were already out there.

Pictures were emerging like breaking news push notifications over different social media platforms. The festival goers who had already managed to get there by charter flight were pretty much stranded. Tents had blown away, the ones left standing looked like disaster relief shelters. There was no food. Snapchat stories of nothingness were emerging. The least filtered stories and videos came up on their phones showing no accommodation and men throwing food out like aid to luxury campers. A girl from San Francisco showed me a picture of her friend’s meal there, two slices of sad bread with a plastic layer of cheese on top; no filter would have made it look slightly respectable.

Groups had been split up, a lot of the people still waiting in the airport had friends who were already out there, some had their flashy stuff stolen by locals (there were no locks or safes in any tents and any lockers provided didn’t come with padlocks). Others were crying on the beach worried about where they’d stay and how they’d make it home.

People on the 8.15pm flight to the Exumas were delayed and then kept waiting on the tarmac for two hours before coming back to Miami airport. They defiantly played music on their phones, while stuck in limbo, to keep morale up.

At this point the festival was looking like it would be cancelled altogether. The PR company for Fyre Festival called me to say they wouldn’t be happy with me going: they didn’t feel comfortable with me seeing the festival in the state it was in and they didn’t feel it would live up to my expectations. This was to put it lightly. They said they were trying to work out return flights for me to go back to London. I’d heard rumours that the PRs were stuck on the Exumas, with no accommodation, so I wasn’t hopeful.

Kids had travelled all across America to be here. They’d spent all their money and had nowhere to stay. Yet, despite all the talk of the incredible ticket prices, I didn’t meet many people who had paid more than $1,500 for the weekend, most of them having nabbed "early bird" $500 tickets - which perhaps explained why the festival was in so much financial difficulty, and why Fyre were so keen to flog upgrades to people once out there. An announcement was made that the festival was “over capacity” and so they couldn’t take any more people to the festival - which was politician speak for it was an unmitigated disaster.

A social media influencer was disgusted. She said the festival hadn’t paid for anything or kept them up-to-date. She also said it looked more tacky than it was sold to her - more of a spring break crowd than a luxe getaway with the elite. She was planning on now sailing to Cuba for the weekend.

Us non-influencers waited to collect our baggage and spent the night in Miami. They chanted "Fyre Fail", blared Disclosure (who should have been playing) on tinny speakers, Facebook Live had reactions, posted video upon video on Snapchat of people standing around in confusion, tweeted the concierge, Facetimed their friends. The festival was over. No one knew anything. A social media protest had broken out and these were the Fyre starters.