The Onion, as only The Onion can, exposed the cesspool of faux-inventions of Kickstarter by calling the folks who start Kickstarter projects, internet criminals who “bilk friends and families out of terrible, ill-conceived and unnecessary personal projects”. Yep, pretty much.
It’s a damn racket that’s been fooling the entire internet! Enjoy it here:
Sometimes The Onion tells us the truths we're unwilling to believe.
I have to wonder how many funded long-tail projects will fail over the next 12 months and all the person has to say is "oh well". I'm sure it's not a deliberate intent to scam, but I can see people getting their reward tiers out of the way, then they have this money and no actual obligation to ultimately produce something with it. Will their rep be destroyed? Sure. But how much is a reputation worth?
This isn't a kickstarter problem, it's an investment problem. Crowdsourcing via Kickstarter or similar is just more likely to backfire right now because it's so horrendously trendy. Thankfully most people are unwilling to pay out for obviously shitty or poorly thought out (or blatantly ripped off!) projects from untrustworthy sources. The best recent Kickstarters are the ones from people with an installed fanbase (Tim Schaefer, Amanda Palmer, Neal Stephenson) or ones endorsed by relatively well known people (if someone like Notch kicks in $10k for an indie game kickstarter, I'm a lot more likely to take it seriously).
Good point. I believe there are hundreds of great inventions (queue the Inventors) and I would invest in ones I thought were good but I cannot. There has to be a way. Maybe Kickstarter Pro where applicants set out a business model, timelines and get cash progressively as they go. 40 % of profit back to the investors. Fail at any point and investors get unspent funds split.
You're not an investor with Kickstarter, that's the problem. Investors retain a share of the company they're investing in, with Kickstarter, you're just giving someone money, the only thing you get in return is whatever the "rewards" are at the pledge level you give money at. That's where Kickstarter is a scam.
umm is this a joke
No shit sherlock.
It's the Onion.
No. The Onion is a completely legitimate news website. Other less-reputable syndicated U.S. news organisations like CNN, MSNBC, ABC as well as high-ranking politicians, senators, congressmen etc often get their breaking stories and facts from The Onion before passing it along to the public.
...And in news just in MySpace has just be relaunched as a kickstarter project by "dr Z.Smith" and "Robot". When approach for comment dr. Smith replyed "get Lost...in Myspace" while robot with swinging arms muttered "warning Will Robertson"
The ending was the best
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http://www.engadget.com/ is good, but I prefer it here because it's more fun.
They need to make another Onion Movie!!! i loved the first one