Busking in Cyberland - On Kickstarter, Dreams, and Villains: Reputation Matters

Jun 21, 2013 14:37


I'm pretty sure my friends will all have heard about the recent project Kickstarter should not have funded. If not, this guy wanted to publish a "seduction guide" based on "research and development done on Reddit". His words on Reddit, carefully erased prior to sending in his Kickstarter proposal, essentially advocated sexual assault. Kickstarter ( Read more... )

crowdfunding, art, busking, life

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Comments 8

rowyn June 22 2013, 09:32:37 UTC
I guess other people are expecting a whole lot more of Kickstarter than I do. I have never actually considered that KS was in any way effectively vetting anything to guarantee that it was anything, including "not outright fraud". Not that I don't know that they have terms of service, but it doesn't occur to me to count on them to enforce the ToS any more than I count on LJ to use their ToS to stop trolls. I assume they'll try but not that they'll succeed. c_c

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wyld_dandelyon June 28 2013, 18:09:51 UTC
I don't think people expected Kickstarter to discover every single time when a creator was lying to them. If they had learned only after the fact that they'd been hoodwinked, I think people would have mostly been angry on Kickstarter's behalf instead of angry at Kickstarter.

In this case, they were contacted about the violation of their TOS _before_ they sent the money, and sent the money anyway. I think a lot of people saw this as evidence that Kickstarter was not (at least in this case) even trying to enforce their rules and principles.

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tigertoy June 22 2013, 16:59:20 UTC
Here under my rock, I hadn't heard about this controversy until now, and I'm not taking the time to read up on it, just going with what you said here. For me personally, it doesn't make much difference; KS has lost its mystical shiny air for me not because of one project that they shouldn't have vetted but because so many projects are just marketing efforts by large established organizations rather than actual independent things that had no chance of happening before KS. "real" KS projects do happen, but I think it's on the individual funder to look into them and decide how special they are, rather than assuming "it's on KS, it must be wonderful ( ... )

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wyld_dandelyon June 28 2013, 18:18:26 UTC
I certainly agree that an individual donor should look at a project and decide whether to support it. Of course, there's so many, I can't imagine anyone trying to fund all Kickstarter projects (or even all kickstarter SF books).

One of the things I liked about Amanda Palmer's kickstarter project was that with a large fan base, she offered a digital copy of the entire k-funded album for the lowest ($1) donor level.

Even when you're not an unknown or little-known indie artist who has no other options for getting your work into the world, there are ways to do a Kickstarter well, and to use it to accomplish things traditional publishing/marketing won't do.

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msstacy13 July 25 2013, 15:45:19 UTC
*tap tap*

Is this thing on?

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Oh, look! wyld_dandelyon July 26 2013, 02:50:01 UTC
A new comment on this old post?

Hi there!

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Re: Oh, look! msstacy13 July 26 2013, 12:18:47 UTC
It's the most recent one I've seen...

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Re: Oh, look! wyld_dandelyon July 27 2013, 03:19:59 UTC
Oh, wow, so it is.

I should do something about that.

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