May 5, 2013

Found a New Category for Kickstarter Epic Fails: WTF Projects

Kickstarter Epic Fail
Now I'm not one to actively dismiss someone else's creative efforts out of hand, but I am quick to call BS on general stupidity or simply dumb ideas.

Love Kickstarter or hate it, you have to admit that there are a lot of good projects seeking funding and a lot of bad ones as well.

Few projects tick me off more than people who ask for "money so I can quit my job and try to put out X, Y, or Z product" A close second are those that just want to ask for money so they can then screw over their usual business partners.

A week or two ago I found the 3rd worst: simply dumb projects. The other day/week I was looking through local projects and came across what I thought was the perfect specimen for a WTF project. A "graphic designer" made a design featuring the name of a city he used to live in and a picture of his kid. That city isn't even in the same time zone as the one either one of us lives in, so there is no "local appeal". The design is such that the kid could look like any boy that age living within around here, which I don't know if it is good or bad.

I don't care for the design myself....I don't need a graphic of a city name and someone else's kid. Maybe that is just me....but I really doubt it. The Kickstarter project intends to get some 4x4 stickers made of this art because, "I have shown the design to several family, friends and friends of my son, they all loved it and have asked me to get them printed as stickers."

Again, maybe this is just me, but if your friends and family wanted stickers of your kid, then why don't you either ask them for money or just pony up the cash yourself? I can't see strangers ponying up $1-$25 dollars so they can get a sticker for every buck they donate. Evidently I am not the only one because although this Kickstarter began on April 18th, there hasn't even been $1 donated.

Seriously? Grandma didn't even kick in a buck? Are you sure folks wanted these stickers, or were they just being polite? Maybe you should just go down to FedExOffice (used to be Kinkos) and have some stickers printed for yourself. It'll only cost a couple bucks....

Am I just getting too cynical regarding Kickstarter or is there a need for some kind of vetting process to get projects onto the sight? I realize that these two options are not mutually exclusive.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think the funding is the vetting process. So any moron can put something up there but only the ideas that strike someone's fancy go anywhere.