Some donors have used Brown’s potato-salad goof as a way of critiquing the new free-for-all feel of the platform or to mock the tone of Kickstarter campaigns in general (which have been mounted by small-timers and movie-making celebrities alike). This, of course, is not what Kickstarter is set up to do, and until recently the company vetted campaigns, looking for rigorous, serious fund-raising projects. It makes me happy when people are not dead serious about everything.” The money isn’t a donation to some future accomplishment but a gift for the existing one of having spread low-key joy across the Internet. Another wrote, “I pledge to him, not to receive a photo of the potato salad, but because I love the idea of pledging to a potato salad. “Best laugh I had in a while,” wrote one funder, who gave two bucks.
Why are people giving money to a stranger who has barely even promised to make a dish of potato salad? Depending on one’s sense of humor, the deadpan, unassuming nature of the plan-its odd simplicity-is simply funny. These élite donors, members of a category that Brown has dubbed “Potato Salads of the World,” are slated to receive all kinds of rewards, including a bite of potato salad delivered to their homes, none of which seem especially feasible or likely to materialize. “It’s my first potato salad.” And yet the money keeps rolling in, thanks to more than three hundred thousand shares of Brown’s funding page on Facebook and extensive coverage and discussion, from Reddit to “Good Morning America.” Much of the funding has come in the form of small donations of a dollar or two, but according to Brown’s project page more than eighty people have donated over fifty dollars.
Kickstarter, in its user guidelines, offers advice to potential investors on how to identify a trustworthy campaign: “Backers should look for creators who share a clear plan for how their project will be completed and who have a history of doing so.” Brown, by his own description, was a bad bet.