Surfers in the coastal Australian town of Byron Bay staged a ‘paddle out’ protest on Tuesday as locals rally against a planned Netflix reality show they say will damage their beachside paradise.
Around 100 surfers paddled to sea on Tuesday to form a cancel symbol off the coast of the New South Wales state town in the hope that Netflix will can the ‘Byron Baes’ series, about social media influencers.
Byron Bay mayor Simon Richardson warned the town’s opposition to the show was strong and ‘you’d be struggling to find one person’ who supported the plan, in an interview with ABC.
Richardson said the ‘vacuous, fake show’ could damage the town’s reputation and bring ‘not just sensitivity challenges for us, but also economic challenges’.
Around 100 surfers paddled to sea on Tuesday to form a cancel symbol off the coast of the New South Wales state town in the hope that Netflix will can the ‘Byron Baes’ series, about social media influencers
Others held placards calling to ‘Give Netflix the flick’ and calling on the streaming giant to ‘consult traditional owners’
Byron Bay mayor Simon Richardson warned the town’s opposition to the show was strong and ‘you’d be struggling to find one person’ who supported the plan, in an interview with ABC
In a statement announcing the show on April 7, the streaming giant said the ‘docu-soap’ would follow Instagrammers without the filter of social media, promising ‘fights, flings and heartbreak’.
Netflix said the show was ‘our love letter to Byron Bay’, saying the town was not just the backyard of Hollywood stars like Chris Hemsworth and Zac Efron but also ‘the playground of more celebrity-adjacent-adjacent influencers than you can poke a selfie-stick at’.
But many residents of the popular tourist town, about eight hours north of Sydney, believe the series would be harmful to the local community, which is dealing with the fallout of its rapidly rising popularity.
An online petition calling on local councils not to grant filming permits to the producers in the ‘exploited paradise’ has attracted almost 8,000 signatures, while some businesses are refusing to allow filming on their premises.
‘They are proposing to drag our name through the mud and make millions of dollars without offering anything back to the community and completely misrepresenting who we are, and it’s totally wrong,’ Byron Bay cafe owner Ben Gordon told Channel Nine.
‘There was no consultation whatsoever. They just came in unannounced,’ Gordon added.
Many residents of the popular tourist town, about eight hours north of Sydney, believe the series would be harmful to the local community, which is dealing with the fallout of its rapidly rising popularity
The town of 9,000 people is one of the most famous in Australia, partly because acting couple Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky have built a mansion there
Mayor Simon Richardson said the community was concerned over the harmful affect of the series, telling public broadcaster ABC ‘it’s potentially going to threaten businesses if the portrayal of Byron is as absurd as I guess a lot of the doco-soap-reality shows are,
‘As a community, we should have a right to be able to not be exploited and to go about our business and also just have a community that has its real and genuine concerns and challenges shared rather than a picture postcard filmed with people who have potentially been here for five minutes’.
Richardson said the region was already attracting 2.5 million visitors a year and did not need the kind of tourists who ‘might be turned on by a vacuous vision of who we are’.
‘What we need now is a moment for our community to take stock, try to find support with the state government to get low-cost housing, to get support for our rough sleepers, etcetera,’ he said.
‘We don’t want an intensification and a heating up of our tourism economy right now.’
An online petition calling on local councils not to grant filming permits to the producers in the ‘exploited paradise’ has attracted almost 8,000 signatures, while some businesses are refusing to allow filming on their premises
Byron Bay is home to about 10,000 people and in recent years has attracted a string of Hollywood stars to its shores.
Already high house prices have surged with an influx of new residents during the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving some locals unable to afford accommodation.
Netflix said its first Australian reality series would ‘aim to build a connection between the people we meet in the show and the audience.’
‘The show is authentic and honest, and while it carries all the classic hallmarks of the form and embraces the drama, heartbreak and conflict that makes for such entertaining viewing, our goal is to lift the curtain on influencer culture to understand the motivation, the desire, and the pain behind this very human need to be loved,’ a Netflix statement said.
‘The reason behind choosing Byron Bay as a location was driven by the area’s unique attributes as a melting pot of entrepreneurialism, lifestyle and health practices, and the sometimes uneasy coming together of the traditional `old Byron’ and the alternative `new,’ all of which we’ll address in the series,’ the statement added.
The town of 9,000 people is one of the most famous in Australia, partly because acting couple Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky have built a mansion there.
International celebrities who are based or spend time in Byron Bay include Matt Damon, Zac Efron and Simon Baker.
Byron Bay activists have successfully stood up to big business in the past. The town has prevented KFC and McDonalds from opening restaurants there after protest campaigns.
In a statement announcing the show on April 7, the streaming giant said the ‘docu-soap’ would follow Instagrammers without the filter of social media, promising ‘fights, flings and heartbreak’
Byron Bay is home to about 10,000 people and in recent years has attracted a string of Hollywood stars to its shores
