Kickstart My Fart
Is it about cash or gas? Small dreams or big money? Either way, I'm burnt out...
7:32 PM, 16th of October, 2024
In today’s goldfish-brained economy, buzz reigns. Hope enters the station on the hype train to Wish City for products, services, and aspiring home furnishings everywhere. Nothing is safe. Dreams are crushed beneath the steely locomotive, green with envy and red with blood, like Christmas for the charismatic. Lingering inky and tarred smoke coats the lungs of those late to the party as the train makes way, bearing the lucky few to have gotten a ticket to the fickle yet promised land of solvency.
That’s the intro to my upcoming book “All Aboard the Hype Train, A MindSalad Retrospective” currently working through its series C funding round on Kickstarter. You can back a wonderful story of a newsletter’s monumental and theoretical rise to online glory!
Some would ask “Why is it on Kickstarter for the third time”? or “Why would I buy a book about an online newsletter at all, much less one that is still trying to meet the “Get Your First 10 Subscribers” goal on Substack?
That’s easy!
I need the money upfront to fund the creation of the newsletter to pay for the book to finance my intended lifestyle of writing silly and thoughtful things as a “day job” (that starts at 7 pm). Newsletters take a few years to get rolling, and I honestly can’t wait that long to reap the benefits of a job I’ve yet to do. It also works well as an insurance policy against the failure of my business, or more likely, the failure of its principal writer to stay on task. Speaking of which, please click the button or fill out the form below to continue hearing tales of my up-and-coming ascendance…
All jokes and silliness aside, I think there is something seriously perverse about the way Kickstarter is being used to fund just about every cool thing I see on the internet. When I see a cool thing, it just so happens that I can sometimes afford to buy it, or at least pretend to until I contact the bank for a chargeback and hope they still send the damned thing.
It bites to click the link and be taken to a Kickstarter page that charges me a princely sum to support them and then does little more than Sapphire did the last time I stopped by the Chartreuse Moose (Meuse?) Club. Seriously, Sapph, you call that a lappy? I asked you to give me a boner in front of 34 other guys, not sit on my lap and ask for a Red Ryder BB Gun.
That’s what happens when strippers start taking pledges instead of cold-hard Kennedys. Yeah, I pay in half-dollars. Not the silver ones though. Don’t you know what those are worth?
Then I start to think about the reasons a company might elect to use Kickstarter. The website says “Bring Your Creative Projects to Life”. This seems to indicate that the primary reason Kickstarter exists is to bring some much-needed capital into the independent product world. It’s similar to what Substack wishes to do for journos, fanfic writers, and good old-fashioned enemies-to-friends smut novelists. It rings hauntingly similar to Patreon, Angel Studios, and Twitch.
From a 1000-ft view, it seems Kickstarter wants to democratize products. Like this one that I am very excited for, and this one that I am most certainly not. Here’s hoping I didn’t mix up those links.
It seems for the smaller firms that this facet of Kickstarter is the intention. Larger firms have started using Kickstarter for reasons that don’t align with “bringing your ideas to life”.
Smart home manufacturer Eufy has been selling products on KS for a reasonably long time now. Longer for sure than the standard 8 or so week period that an independent company tries to fund the beginning of a product.
These are not “dreams” being brought to life. Its just a massive company trying to find a different and much less crowded place to hawk their wares. Eufy is a subsidiary of Fantasia Trading LLC, which owns Anker and Soundcore. Yes, those Anker and Soundcore.
Anker is sold in every major big box store in the country, from Walmart to Best Buy. Probably even Mirco Center too if you’re privileged enough to live near one. Holla at ya boi Micro C!
This makes me wonder what else Fantasia Trading expects from this deal with Kickstarter. I can only see 2 other options. Either they got a great sales deal from them, or this is entirely about one thing.
Brand Image.
Eufy probably sought to set itself apart from the crowded market to align itself more with “backers” than “buyers”.
Eufy has recently had a lawsuit against it, class action style, due to its AI systems and ability to use an online “BionicMind AI” to detect similar people and faces.
These elements combined make me wonder if the intent from the beginning had nothing to do with financing a product, and much more to do with “tech-washing” an ethically questionable product.
Eufy ran into issues with the handling of its camera and AI facial scan features. Data was sent to servers under Anker’s name instead of its own. Anker is a tech company out of Hunan, China. This likely does nothing to quell the fears that scanning technology is passing through servers we likely don’t trust, though that could be better explained by someone like
and his wonderful publication . I’ll leave that to the professionals. I’m just an over-decaffeinated babbler thought-vomiting all over a server for others to scroll past.It is the belief of this late-night-jazz-inspired keyboard saboteur that this all leads to a sense of weariness; some people are getting their backs blown out by “backer fatigue”. Most commonly, fellow gamers will recognize the Steam Early Access Program formerly known as Steam Greenlight. Some projects when backed never make it to final development, leaving players with an unfinished game. This game is still selling for $19.99 in the unfinished state it was in back in early 2015. I find it hard to believe that there is a whole $119.94 sitting in PayPal somewhere just waiting for Bitmonster, Inc. to collect its tuppence.
What if we tried something revolutionary? What if more products and their high-cap blue-chip parent companies took their products and risked it all for a sweet, sweet shot at the king by forgoing the “Early Adopter” and “Backer” programs? The saccharine high of getting in on the ground floor is becoming far less appealing. Give me a taste of that good old-fashioned box-store melee. Leave this risk-taking to the willing. They can pay more for the privilege.
But before you go off into the sunset arm in arm with me to buy some well-established and bug-tested products, don’t forget to back my new book “All Aboard the Hype Train, A MindSalad Retrospective”* on Kickstarter! How else can I afford to log out of Steam at night feeling like an accomplished journalist?
* The book isn’t real, and if it were, it would be crap. The linked book is certainly NOT crap. Its one of the best things I have ever read.