Rithmomachia

KICKSTARTER is a “disaster”.

It was a great idealism, sure, but the ‘no visible means of support’ and ‘we’re blameless for whatever the project does’ bits all are now coming to maturity after the first heady flush of “oh let’s participate in this clever idea”.

I’ve found it fairly amusing that - in the midst of a so-called economic crisis - apparently a shit-ton of people have a shit-ton of spare money to naively throw at people they don’t know to pursue projects with no substantive business plan or even credible development program.

The entire thing doesn’t add up. I know, I know, “sharing economy” and all those nonsense buzzwords; well they don’t actually mean anything.

Certainly, it’s not impossible for some projects to reach fruition. But when we look back at this in 20 years and say “why did so many people dump so much cash on the basis of so little reason?” the successes are going to be a pretty small slice on the bell-curve of results.

I suspect that anthropologically, Kickstarter will be remembered like the Bacchanalia, Marie Antoinette, and Caligula writ large: an entire society with so much spare wealth that they can literally waste it on frivolity (when they’re not buying $8 coffees).

I don’t expect that these halcyon days will last.