TRASHFUTURE - Kickstarter Sucks feat. Your Kickstarter Sucks

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

This week, we’ve got Jesse Farrar and Mike Hale of the Your Kickstarter Sucks podcast to discuss Kickstarter as a business, the weird and deeply unethical stuff that crowdfunding platforms get away with, and much more. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t also include recent British news--particularly of the horny type. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture Please consider donating to charities helping Palestinian people here: https://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/palestine-emergency-appeal/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3oja5NbR8AIVSOmyCh2LdQ9rEAAYAiAAEgKM9PD_BwE and here: https://www.grassrootsalquds.net/ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

So Mike, Nate, for the benefit of the recording, Mike's recording is only gonna have one clap on it. His is gonna be, it's gonna start later. So just, we're doing a second sync point here. Three, two, one, Mark. I'm pressing record now. No, no! You have to already have hit record before!

I think the recording is pressed at the clap. Will you tell me when to press record? Okay, we're gonna do this one more time. How could you press record and clap at the same time? I don't know, that's what I'm asking! Okay, I'm pressing the clap. The recording should be running, and then we do the clap. Okay, all right, let's try to do the round of applause.

This is now gonna be the third time, and there's only gonna be one clap on Mike's channel. I'm recording now. Okay, so three, two, one, Mark. Smashed it. We've made it around the applause, really. Yeah. All right, so start recording now.

Oh! Nate, please make a cold open out of this. Hello, and welcome back to this free episode of TF. It's the free one! It's the podcast you're listening to right now. It's free, you've paid nothing for it, you freeloader. That's right. Uh-huh, that's right.

And it is Riley Milo and Alice. Coming over here, listening to our podcast for free. Yeah, that's right. The populace. Yeah, jail's too good for him, I say. You can only listen to free podcasts now if you're an Islamist. That's right.

Normal British people have to sign up to the Patreon. That's right, this is the UK Manifesto 2028. It's weirder and more niche. But we are very excited as well to be joined by Jesse Farrar and Mike Hale of the Your Kickstarter Sucks podcast. Guys, how's it going? Hello.

Thank you very much for being here with us today. Thank you for joining us. This is Barbershop Quartet. Yeah, I was waiting for the third guy because we didn't have a third guy. Well, your two friends from Your Kickstarter Sucks two show up, the guys who do the same podcast for like a minute delay.

Yeah. They'll be here soon and they'll be hitting record almost as soon as after the interview. Oh, not again. The Barbershop Quartet has been devastated by COVID and now it's just two guys and they can't harmonize anymore. No, it's...

Well, people don't want to work anymore. That's the sad thing about it. They don't want to work anymore. The Barbershops, they're having to resort to bribing the other two members of the Quartet to come in with wages. Yeah. Unbelievable.

What happened to Barbershop Quartet in this country? You know? I don't know. I think that they're mostly at Disney World. I think that's the only place you can find most of American culture is at. You got to go to Disney. You got to go down the promenade

and you're going to see all the things we remember from our youth. Well, when America was great, quite frankly. And the other thing is the population of Barbershop Quartets has been devastated by the novel coronavirus because of all the adult children that keep going there. That's true.

Yeah. I'm just like, no, I will have my hand-contact photo with Mickey. And he's like, it's a different Mickey every time. The big lollipop gets shared around. Oh boy, look out. You can't sing with a mask on, no problem. Not to defend these guys,

but I do see where they're coming from. Barbershop Quartet guys actually have a higher rate of death from COVID than nurses. They're on the front lines. It's the thin red and white line. Yeah, there we go. Oh yeah. Got it.

Remember Barbershop Quartet guys were hard. Oh yeah. I do. The modern Barbershop Quartet wouldn't last one minute on the storming of the beaches at Normandy, in my opinion. I'm always saying this. That's right. How many Barbershop Quartet performances have you been to?

Were they open with a land acknowledgement and then the pronouns? This year, you mean, or? This year? Not a lot. We've been in a lot of them. Mostly it's like it's a Barbershop Quartet performance like on Twitch. And it's like, yeah, I get you have to support the artists.

But like, you're not there, you know, it's not the same. Not the same. Not the same. Gang drops of notes that are out of harmony. Oh man. Anyway, so I want to talk a little bit about a bunch of things. Let's look. I wanted to talk about this for a while.

That's what a podcast is. Yeah. You talk about a bunch of stuff with some people. Yeah. What I wanted to talk about the company Kickstarter, because I think it's a very interesting one for a lot of reasons. Yeah, you guys familiar with Kickstarter?

You heard of it? What do you think of it? Oh, we've heard of it. I think what you'll find is actually our familiarity with the company Kickstarter is significantly less than you might imagine. We don't know what the hell, I don't know what's going on over there.

It might as well just be, it's just like a thing. We just need to sit in a little cube and then somebody dumps crap in our laps and then we look at it and laugh about it and then move on with our day. But as far as like, where is the office even? I don't know anything about this. I don't know what they,

It's in, no, that's, Is it in California? Well, the Looney left, because that's where they're going to put all that crap all over there. So that makes sense. Plastic, excuse me. I want to say plastic.

I said plastic because I got crapola on the brain. Like crass, crass. Where's the accent Kickstarter? Yeah, it's all over, all Xs nowadays. Well, actually, well, we'll get into that, but there is quite a bit of that that goes on there now. But before we get into the Kickstarter stuff, I do want to,

I regrettably have to bring us into British politics minute. Oh, no, but it's a good British politics day. British politics is so fucking good this week. I love it. It's a lot of fun. Really, really is a good. For the benefit of Mike and Jesse, our health secretary, a guy called Matt Hancock.

Hancock, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, classic. Hold that thought because. Basically, he came to, I guess he could say he came to prominence in our mind, because a couple of years ago, when he was the secretary of a department

called Digital Culture, Media and Sport, there was a video of him, like kind of half acidly doing parkour and then saying it's a good way to learn about your body. Not a good way. A great way. A great way. A great way to learn about your body.

And then while slightly panting, he just gestures to the parkour instruction and goes, yeah, I just can't do those kinds of flips. Yeah. He is a guy, the way to describe him is, he is a guy who saw an Amazon Alexa and felt like his life was changed. He has the affect of an eager,

but particularly stupid, golden lap. Wow. And he'd been in charge of the pandemic response and has bungled it very badly. Yeah. There's nothing in the rules to say that a golden retriever can't be the health secretary. Well, I mean, you shouldn't.

It wouldn't do a good job. And in this case, didn't. None. And also the other thing is, was famous for like giving out contracts. But he got like the guy who works at the pub near his house to produce a bunch of vials for COVID tests. Yes.

Support local business. Let's go. DIY, yeah. He basically turned it into a DIY scene among his friends. Knowing Matt Hancock is the most lucrative business he can be in as a British person. Basically, yes. I think at one point, he gave away a favor for,

or there was like some allegation that he was like. It was reopening the horse races. Yes. Because there was like some guy who was like big in horse racing who allegedly got Matt Hancock to like restart horse racing in the middle of the lockdown in COVID because he gave Matt Hancock a membership of the Jockeys enclosure at Newmarket Racecourse

which was worth 1,300 pounds. Whoa. So, yeah. That's so, it's interesting to realize every now and then that everywhere else there's dumb guys like this too. Like. Yeah, everybody else is just insane. Oh yeah.

Do you remember when Doug Ford fell down playing football? Was that him or was it, I don't remember which one it was. I don't remember which one of the guys it was. Was Rob Ford fell down playing football? I mean, Boris Johnson did something similar where he was like on like a trade trip to Japan. And then like, you know how like when politicians go places

they like, they do like little like Potemkin activities that are supposed to get photo ops. So, Boris Johnson played against like a Japanese boys rugby team and just sent one of the kids fucking flying. He's an amazing picture of this kid just in midair with like Boris Johnson fucking like a man who is a perfect sphere just like knocking him out of the way with an elbow. I mean, what a jerk, but you got to admit

that would feel so good to do. Oh, king shit. Oh yeah. What are you going to do, not win? I mean, he's everyone would say you were beaten by kids. Yeah, that's not Britain on the international stage. Anyways, it was a spiffing game, scored eight tries. So, with your introduction to Matt Hancock,

101 class now completed, a security photo from inside Whitehall, which is, you know, like that's weird that that was just released to like the Murdoch press. Yeah, someone leaked it of Matt Hancock. Basically, like he was married, having a very amateurish first kiss style kiss with an eight. He's grabbing her ass though. My man's a full-ass handful.

He's getting it in. Happened and this woman, Gina Coladangelo, who he knew at Oxford, was also one of the biggest benefactors of his like, of the contract bonanza coming out of his office. Like she got tens of thousands. Also her brother too, who is like a director of some firm that like makes PPE now, just cool. Yeah.

Do you like Gina Coladas and kissing ministerial aides? I sure, that was sad. You got that one out quick. Beautiful, yeah. But I think like you're working in the health secretary's office. You're working long nights, fighting the grueling pandemic that is and it's a horny job. And how could you resist?

You're working, you're basically managing a charnel house of like just unnecessary deaths. And you look into that just open mouth and big vacant eyes and who wouldn't reach for the peanut butter? That's all I'm saying. Yeah, Matt Hardcox. That's all they should call him. Yeah, I just fucking retool the joke

that I made more explicitly in the group chat. Sure did. About putting peanut butter on her pussy so that Matt Hancock would eat her out. That's what you got to do. Also, that's how they get, they get, that's how they get him to talk when it's a press conference. They put some peanut butter on the roof of his mouth.

They dub over it later. Anyway, pictures of this guy and he looks like me. So I'm going to actually have to object a little bit to what we were saying about him being a stupid idiot who likes peanut butter on pussies. I just want to step back for a second and say, I feel like peanut butter on ass. Come on, man.

I'm a civilized kind of guy. My vanilla. Come on. So he anyway, this is like there's what I find very funny about this once again is like, obviously, like there's a lot of demands for him to be sacked. If we've learned anything about British politics in the last few years, it's that you can just not quit.

Like being in trouble is just like something you do to yourself. You can just be like, OK, yeah, it's like it's weak to quit. So what are you going to do? Quit. What are you going to do? Fire away. Keer Sturma has been like, yeah, actually, I don't want him to resign because question. Interestingly, he's cool.

So Annalise. So the Labour Party chairwoman has Annalise Dodds lately of this parish has said Charisma Titan. Essentially, but said like, look, suave extraordinaire. He set the rules for social distancing at two meters. And they're in this picture where they're like kissing and playing grab ass.

They're within two meters of each other. He's got to go. Amazing. He's gone to his house. Yeah, technicality. Absolutely. It's like, I think Liberals internalized about the fighting like the fight against Al Capone was that he was got

not a technicality and that's it. They were like, OK, it's going to be technicalities all the way. This I what I love about this is that it's the least sackable thing he's done in months. Like this is like the hundred and twenty thousand extra dead. Look, my man, like if there's one thing I'm happy for Matt that he's getting it in. That's all I'm saying.

I like, you know, I'm less I'm less glad about, you know, the deaths, I'm less glad about that. But if he's getting it in, that's fine. I don't want him to I don't want him to resign for this. Also, who was sitting on this image for months and then just decided to it's weird. I've fully got my ten foil hat on about this. The government has absolutely decided it's time for Maddie to go and someone's leaked this.

Yeah, it's just it's it does seem interesting that, you know, it is fun when you just sort of get to be aware that like the like into all of the press that's basically all controlled by Rupert Murdoch or clones of Rupert Murdoch just sits on incriminating information about everyone in the government for a while and then releases it when it's convenient for someone. It feels like a really good democracy. Well, that'll make you go nuts, huh?

Yeah, it's so it's just it's constant. It's constant tin foil hat shit over here in Britain, boys. I say I think we're I think we're on track for this with Matt Gates as well, who is like, let's see, let me let me I'll say it carefully. There is there's there's maybe some circumstantial evidence to suggest that he's like a psycho pedophile and he's he's allegedly allegedly according to the press, which you can't you can't trust as far as you can control these days fucking he's he's in a couple of months.

He's going to get fired for like microwaving fish in the break room at Congress or wherever he works or whatever that is. He should be fired for that to be fair. And it stinks. It smells so freaking bad. What the crap smells. And also it was my great fish. You're planning unless you unless you're planning on cleaning out the

microwave just sandwich so get a sandwich in the Congressional, the Congressional Cafe, you know, they sell it there for that reason. Matt gets knew the risks when he microwave fish. Yeah, at the end of the day, he mad his nephew. OK, look, there's a social contract in the Constitution that says, do not steal from my lunch and microwave you microwave fish. You have to air it out and don't make coffee. You and your hunky nephew go near that microwave one more time.

I really hope Nesta comes out of this. OK. Oh, we're praying for Nesta, aren't we? Yeah. Is anybody checked on Nesta or can we get a wellness check? Somebody should check on that. Anyway, it's Harry to check in on Nesta. So the the very funny things sort of check in on your nephew. So look, in conclusion, Matt Hancock, everything he does is very funny just by the nature of who he is and his affect.

Not his appearance, but his affect. Yeah, there we go. I think you can you can have a little a little snog every now and again in moderation as a tree. I think it's perfectly healthy. I mean, she's on your wife with somebody else who is chasing on their husband. Is not great, I guess. But like Nansa of contrast.

But like he is a Tory MP. They're all cheating on their wives, allegedly, not actionably. But I mean, you know, that's like the point of being a Tory MP. It's stressful, stressful is all. Heck, like you said, all these people dying. You sitting here going, geez, Louise, you know, what am I? What am I going to do? I got this hard on with it.

I've broken I've broken both of my hands, giving out these contracts. It's tough. Yeah, I'm going to retract. I'm going to say no one's cheating on their wife. Matt Hancock's not cheating on his wife. Just like we know Keir Starmer is not cheating on his wife. Speaking of Starmer, speaking of Starmer, before we get into the Kickstarter stuff, I have one more thing about Starmer, which is again, remember him? Yeah, remember that guy.

Matt Hancock, but I have one more thing. Yeah, which is basically after hiring another new labor dinosaur, Matthew Doyle, labor has now come out with a pledge to number one, ditch the like funded. Because like basically we used to we used to have or we were trying to build in this country, like a system of like social care, which is like caring for you at home before you need like medical treatment or whatever, because like an NHS for like outside the hospital, more or less, and for like elder elder care and all this. And labor, the previous administration, of course, was going to say we're going to have

like a social care service like the NHS, which was great. And we're going to save the country a lot of money. And it's also going to save like a ton of life. It would be generally very good. Labor has now dropped that because they're saying, oh, that's another stick for the Tories to beat us with. And they've replaced it with a new policy. Having good policies is a stick for the Tories to beat you with.

Because that's what everyone hated, of course, was the policies. Because you have to appeal to Tory voters. That's the only way you win on the list. So what he's changed is instead of that thing, which would save lives and improve like people's quality of life and so on. Starmer has highlighted the blight of off-road bikes and high-powered cars being raced through residential neighborhoods. Oh, that's right.

And I just say, oh my God. Games left. Yeah. Here, Starmer, you can pry my convertible out of my cold dead hands. He says, I will fight you for it. He says, as Chief Prosecutor, I saw too many examples of crimes perceived as low-level, not being tackled quickly enough before they escalate. So he says-

This is like a Kamala Harris level thing of being pathologically unable to not say when I was a cop. And also he's like, hey, broken window theory. That went great. Everywhere else it's been applied. Let's do it here, but specifically tune to the just broken and twisted minds of people who live in British suburbs. He's just powerfully Alan Partridge.

Look, local wrongans, shits. Okay. They have doped some obscene words on the side of my car. And I think this is an important issue to resolve with the voters. He becomes Alan Partridge more every single day. Yeah. Look, that's a storm as a knobhead. Do you think that's acceptable in this day and age?

It is. It is astonishing that it's like, yeah, they've drawn a little knob and put my face on it. It is astonishing that we were- I mean, it's so fucking- I mean, I imagine you guys sort of feel this as well, sort of seeing like the Bernie moment pass and the Democrats replace like stuff that they were going to do that's going to improve people's lives with like, yeah, we're going to like cancel like 10 bucks of student debt for one guy to see this.

Like we have all these things that we could do that will like make Britain like a decent place to grow old in or whatever. And they're a huge win-win. Like they save the government money. They've improved people's lives. And we're going to replace that by cracking down on the guys riding motor bikes through your front, through your street. Yeah.

It's just so depressing. But the other thing is, is that they actually won't even do that part. Like even if that were something that was like, that was my big thing and it was like really important to me and I accept- Yeah, my campaign promise. It turns out it's hard to do. That's all they have to say is when they get off, it's like, it turns out it's hard to, you know, it sees other guys over here that were-

This is human psychology. You fucking make a big deal out of this shit you're going to do and it scratches that itch and you don't have to actually do it. Don't announce your shit. Yeah, and then like, because in four years, I mean, it's like you can just- This is what I would say. Just work on your shit quietly. When it's ready, then you announce it.

Who's going to be mad at you? I really like the idea of like, just fully doing this as like national priority number one is we hire like 500,000 more cops and they're all chasing around kids on the little bikes. We have to get down to like 40 jesters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a lot of wide geezers chasing guys on motorbike. We're finally- We like, get rid of the height requirement for the police and replace it with a width.

Yeah, they're just clothes lining you off that motorbike with like a four on the thickness of your head. We're finally going to Salt Lake. It's basically Keer Starmer promises to get the kids off your lawn, more or less. Yeah, also the cops will be on the lawn with the loud bikes as well, right? Like, am I misunderstanding how this is going to be applied? That's lots of cars. You hate it loud bikes now.

Wait, wait, wait till we get our boys out there. These are loud bikes. They're being loud on my behalf. That's a loudness that scares the bad guys. Cop loud is good. Yeah, cop loud. I love listening to sirens. So relax.

So I think that's all the British politics I have to stomach for for today. I'd like to go into our central topic, which is Kickstarter. So I want to just add, like, before I sort of get into Kickstarter, right, like, you've been doing YKS for a while. I'm a big fan of the show. I recommend people listen to it. How did you sort of come across Kickstarter as your sort of rich vein of content? Mike, you sort of, you had been writing about it in sort of your capacity as a journalist

for a while before it took off as a podcast program. I don't. Yeah, I was just, I was just doing it for fun. And I said, you know what, you know what, I don't know, I'm so passionate about this. I think I started like, yeah, real passion for crowdfunding. I'm just trying to, you're trying to improve the crowdfunding economy by highlighting it's constructive criticism. It's right.

Could be better was the original title. It was cut off by Apple podcast. I think I started as a blog in like 2008 on Tumblr or something. And then they took the porn out. So it took the porn out. You had to go. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Originally, you'll have to change your dream of the fisherman's wife. There was, you know, actually not that long ago, a couple of years ago, we did like rip the whole website and archive the contents of it because we really thought, you know, this is a matter of time before people stop doing this. And we were wrong. We could not have been more wrong about that. People continue to do it. I mean, every single week, there are, I mean, I don't know, dozens or hundreds

of new things to potentially make fun of. So that, I think that is pure luck. I don't, I don't know why anyone would continue to do it, to be quite honest with you. So I think that, that kind of leads me to like show. I don't know why either. Sparks are flooding. Yeah. You see, they're both trapped in the abyss.

Is this part of a purgatory thing for you? Have you been cursed by some kind of a witch? And as soon as you do enough kick starters, like you'll be free. We'll get out of the fucking bottle. Just do one funny show and we can finally get out. Yeah. For the benefit of the listener, both of the guys have these like perfect ink black backgrounds, like they're coming at us from like a kind of liminal space.

Yeah. Because they are. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's a perfect liminal space. One of the things that we spoke about over the last couple of days, right, is trying to be like, we know Kickstarter, it's ostensibly like a place where you go

and you can fund a project, but what is Kickstarter actually like a machine to do? You know, what is it? What is it? What is it about it? I have a difficult time answering that conclusively because I think different people are using it for different reasons. And I don't think any of them line up with what the actual company Kickstarter would say about it.

So if someone who works at Kickstarter, and I mean in management, not the people who are like doing actual work that are trying to unionize or whatever that situation is over there, I'm sure it worked out very well, the people who are like in charge of advertising Kickstarter as a brand would say, I guess this is a way of making dreams come true. What would be even the most optimistic interpretation of it? It's a corporate make-a-wish foundation. Yeah, I kind of have that in front of me, which is when we started Kickstarter, our goal wasn't to start another company, which is good because they started Kickstarter

and not a different company. Right, that makes sense. That actually tracks really well. Okay, so far one for one. It was to create a way for artist musicians, filmmakers, chefs. I haven't seen a lot of chef stuff on there. Okay, that's weird. What would you kick-start as a chef?

Well, the one guy I need a lot of role for, remember there was one guy that like kick-started a potato salad and got like a million dollars. So I guess that, yeah, okay, fine. That tracks chef. Well, at least one chef crafts people, designers, adventurers. Again, I don't know who kick-started. And I'm trying to go, you know, trying to go out of town. And other creative people to fund and build community around their ideas.

We wanted to create a universe where ideas were funded, not because some executive thought they seemed like a good way to make money, but because people wanted them to exist. So their argument, it's front as you to hear them say it, is kind of like that idea of make dreams come true. And also there's this idea like, oh, we're democratizing the economy of stuff. Yeah, right. And which is good. Yeah, it turns out a lot of useful stuff is made out of that.

I think so, yeah, so it's very similar to Shark Tank in that regard, where on the surface level you imagine, this is just any old Joe Schmo with a twinkle in his eye, you know, and wanting to make the world a better place. When in reality, by the time they show up on Shark Tank and are interfacing with Mark Cuban and Damon John, they are already like little baby entrepreneurs with millions of dollars in financing behind them. They have some connections already somehow because they've shown up with a product, right? Whether they're like, I think I saw one time where they were like, we have a new idea for

a line of like improved skiing and snowboarding clothing, right? And this is already a $3 million a year business or whatever the hell. Like, that's not just- Meryl, you're on the show. Wait, what are you talking about? What do you need them for? For the bank. You did it.

You are done. So it's not someone sitting at home in like the late night infomercial of the guy who was like, I invented super soakers. And then 30 years later, we're all kind of using super soakers, I guess. Every day. Every day. Wait, what do you piss into? Oh, okay.

Mr. Smart Guy. So when you're at Burghine, how exactly are you soaking the guy with piss? I get that. I mean, that's the feeling I get from it. You use this adequate soak. Yeah, a merely tolerable one. So British made super soaker. So I get this-

A moissaner. All right. Baz's moissaner. Baz's moissaner made it- The Baz's moissaner. It's less than lethal. So I- Yeah, Baz's moissaner that LLC has like sold millions to the Israeli defense force.

So I get the feeling right of a platformized version of like a late night infomercial. And some of it, like it's also to say like not every Kickstarter is bullshit, but because like some of them are just like, yeah, I'm trying to make a movie. If you help me make this movie, that would be great. Thank you. You know, fine. But I think there is this, when you remember the business model of Kickstarter, they just- That's why we invited, that's why we invited our friends from your Kickstarter is fine.

Yeah, your Kickstarter is okay. A lot of them are okay. And I sort of, I do sometimes feel like we are straddling a line in an inappropriate way when we're talking about people. We're talking about their projects that I think if they ever listen to the show, they would say they would immediately be hurt. And I don't- Devastative.

I don't want to hurt everyone that's, you know, some people, some people should be hurt. And Mike wants to hurt everybody. I want to kind of pull the punch just a little bit on some folks that it's just like, they've just got something else going on. That's not germane to creating a business. Not everybody can start a business. And that's why we support our small business owners. It's very hard to do as entrepreneurs ourselves.

We know how difficult it can be, right? We don't want to cut these guys off at the legs, but like, there's always some aspect of it that is mockable. So like one instance of this is the thing where it's like, you're clearly making a joke and you are not someone who is online all the time. And therefore inured to the barrage of abuse and criticism and hate that generates from, you know, things like our show. So like, there's a guy we talked about recently who came up with the idea of shot glasses.

Okay. Now, I know what you're thinking. We already have shot glasses. I don't get it. Well, there's actually a twist. There are little glasses you put on your face. And he's like 3D printed, these little cups that can go into the eye holes of the glasses, I guess.

And you can't really see out of them, of course. And also maybe hard. The liquid in there is, you know, it's a what's the word where light doesn't come through it. Streaming down your face. Yeah, and then getting like grain alcohol in both eyes. That's getting in your eyes. Yeah, that's how you get drunk. You read a little more about the guy and he's like,

what was it Mike? He was saying, it was like, well, I'm in lockdown with my grandma and we're just kind of looking for something to do. Yeah, I live with my grandma. We're bored. That's like, that's funny. It's funny to make something with your grandma. That's a funny joke.

But I'm still going to put it on the show because it's a silly idea. I don't want you to ever see this. So don't tag the guy and his grandma and say, these guys said you suck. We don't think you suck. We just think I probably will not be wearing the shock glasses anytime soon. You know, but I think there's also there and that's there's this sort of sense of innocence about a lot of them. But also some of them are seemed like deeply cynical where it's like someone has sort of

fabricated much like sort of a lot of the startups that we talk about on this show. They have fabricated a problem and then like they've just bought some like stupid solution to that problem on wish.com. And they're trying to portray it as I found one of those that we're going to talk about later on where like as I read through it, I just fucking hated the people behind it and wanted to mock them. Yeah, there's a lot of there is a lot of evil to be done on there. Certainly. There's a what that bulletproof backpacks one that was big when school shootings were popping off

a while there. You know, I'd say there's there is a school shootings were really hot for a while. It was there was we're hot. They fell out of the summer was just gunshots. Yeah, so there is a sense. I think of like quite quite like I don't know sort of there's a there's a sense. I think real sort almost like predatory opportunism that sort of exists on this platform as well. And I think Kickstarter doesn't care because they they get paid when projects get funded.

So they just want to fund as many projects as they possibly can with some notable exceptions. For sure. And I would I would say also I would maybe level a charge at Kickstarter of looking the other way when projects do get funded, maybe in one big push toward the end of the project. When it seems like if they don't get another $5,000, they're going to lose the $20,000. They've already hypothetically raised. That seems like something if you were interested in the integrity of the project, that would be something you would be investigating, which I don't know that they ever have.

They do not. Well, it's because like that. Yeah, their their whole thing is just we're going to complete transactions. And if we start asking questions, that's fewer transactions completed. Yeah, it's true. And it's not dissimilar from Patreon in a way, which is it's built. It's baked in that they have to be sort of neutral on almost everything. But when they're not neutral on everything, you almost feel like they got it way

wronger than they would have if they had just shut up. So it's sort of like a yeah, it's it's I'm not going to stump for like free speech censorship type of crap. But whenever they have pulled the trigger, they are just they're aiming it at the wrong places. You know, I there was one that we did on the show that was extremely nasty. And we talked I almost felt bad even talking about it on the show. And then, you know, reached out to Kickstarter and was like, this is fucking gross what you have on your platform here.

It was a it was a campaign that I started to get Jesse some some new underwear. Yeah. And he was mad. Oh, it's harassment is what it is. Yeah, that's right. Targeted this is classic case of cyberbullying. Yeah, I hope you took him to court, Jesse. Cyberbullying on Kickstarter is a huge deal.

It's a big problem. It's a big problem. And I've you know, I've since cleaned up, you know, I've cleaned up my act a little bit. So it's, you know, it's a big player. Second pair, Mack Weldon, by the way. Yeah, kick started to wash Riley's stanky dick. Oh, no, I'm saving up for a really big sponge. So that's right, Jesse.

Go up. So what happened in this situation? Right. It was I was just stonewalled. It was Mike, if you remember, this was the one that was like, the Nazi anime. Not say in the night. Is it why?

Why food? Do they say? Do they say why? Why food games or something? Guys who are who are getting really horny for like like adolescent girls who are also Nazis and they're like personified like hands or tanks and stuff like this. So yeah, like crossing several lines, I in my opinion, maybe something you kind of

cool if it was done right. The right hand, obviously. Yeah. That's right. This is not convincing. Hey, I really wasn't there that I was reading a Nazi tank. You know, comic book. Alice is like, wait, I remember this Patriot.

Yeah. Somebody on the Twitch chat was like, why are you backing them? That's right. So it's cool. Next question. So they just want to get completed transactions. Just a guy in court being like, but if the children are Nazis, surely it's good to nonce them. Are you saying the Nazis don't deserve it?

Are you pro-Nazis? It's logic lording the judge. Yeah, that's right. Right. So I mean, the judge is just like, Gnadi Zhukov. For the last time yet. So basically, I think there is the, I'll jump ahead a little bit here, right? Which is the Kickstarter organizing, organized labor drive, like the unionized Kickstarter.

It remains one of the few like companies where I think of the slight majority of its workforce is union. This all was kicked off because someone made an like an Antifa coloring book for adults or whatever, not talking on the merits of the product itself. But which is politically fine, but probably just a little vicariously embarrassing. And essentially the set off a furor in the company because Breitbart demanded that they take it down. And this was a case where they did pull the trigger and then decide to take it down. Yeah.

Like Jesse said, they do the fucking wrong shit. Yeah. It's like fucking, what was another one that was like along the lines of the Nazi thing? It was like another one that was just like straight up. I don't know if I ever went so far as to report another one. That was the one where I almost thought like, that was one of the few times I think in the course of the show, I was ever like, let's, we should actually like, we should do, we should care about this. The ironic distance I keep between me and my subject matter is going a melting away.

My precious ironic distance. Luckily it didn't go anywhere. And now we're just back to doing the same crap. So that's good. Can you imagine if Kickstarter cared and then we were like, holy shit, just fucking rejuvenated we're like, we're doing a good thing. This is organizing everywhere. But yeah.

So this, but they, they don't pull that they basically don't make those decisions in the right direction. And it was, it was them deciding that that like led several employees to like start a union drive who all were coincidentally fired. Huh? Yeah. That's weird. Yeah.

What do you think about that? Huh? Coincidence probably. They're probably putting fish in the microwave. Oh yeah. Classic fish microwavers. They probably want to unionize to protect their fish in the microwave. Yeah.

That's all right. Right. And so basically the thing is right in addition to like this hostility to organize labor, Kickstarter is also a B company, a B corporation. And it was found. It's the B movie. It's called an apiary. Yeah.

But it was founded in and by Perry Chen in the early 2000s among some others who was CEO until 2013 when he stepped down to do some bullshit like genuinely just to do some bullshit for like the rest of his life. He had an idea for a company. Yeah. He's going to try and get it funded. He's going to try to get his product funded or Kickstarter. Yeah.

He had an idea for this thing with like Nazi kids in tanks. So he worked actually as the 2016 MIT Media Lab Directors Fellow with Joy Edo. So if you remember, I got basically like getting money more or less directly from the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation. Okay. This guy really stepped in at this time. Jeffrey Epstein really into like pansies. He also was on the Knight Commission on Trust Media and American Democracy,

which basically was like a bunch of billionaires like Bill Gates and so on, paid for the Aspen Institute for again, just like a bunch of morons to come together to compile. Billionaires don't deserve to be on something as cool sounding as the Knight Commission. Yeah. I'm afraid it was cool sounding. I'm sorry. But basically, yeah, it was like a billionaire commissioned the report from the Aspen Institute to talk about how like the news got scary and social media is mean and that's how we have Trump.

It was like the Err one of that. The years and years. Yeah. Yeah. More or less. So that's what Perry Chen has been up to. But as he left the company, he turned it into a B Corp, which is a public benefit corporation, which basically means it's administered.

Actually, interestingly, I think this is very funny. All these public benefit corporations are like, oh, we're doing stakeholder capitalism. We're doing like stuff that's like, we're not measuring our bottom line. We're measuring the bottom line of the community or whatever through as many hearts as we can fill the whether your status is a B Corp is administered by a private institution called the B Corp, B Labs, which basically lobbies politicians to give tax incentives to the things that it gets paid to certify as good. Yeah.

So that's fun. And so basically, right? What Kickstarter does is it has this thing where it's like we are for the community. We are doing stakeholder capitalism. We're not trying to get a big IPO and then get a big payday and then go live on a yacht. We're trying to do something meaningful and rather have a big IPA. That's right.

Yeah. With the more aggressive of a name, the better on that IPA, call it hell bitch nuclear bomb. And it's so hoppy you can't even see straight after drinking it. And like the thing is, like as a B Corp, you know, you do a bunch of things that are like, again, like generally laudable like you, they say like they hire from their gender diversity is better than in the rest of the tech sector. They sort of, they do, they pay like slightly more than average again for their sector like fine.

And then they're using that to advertise how good they are essentially. But like a lot of the stuff that they claim kind of rings hollow, right? So you say, oh, we never want to sell or go public because that would push the company to make choices that we don't think are in the best interest of the company as like a stakeholder driven entity. And it's like, yeah, that's every, every big tech company IPOs and everyone takes home a, you know, a big IPA they can go swimming in or whatever it is you do when you're a rich guy, baby lubed up twink IPA lubed up twink IPA.

It's 14% alcohol and it tastes like shit. We're filling the skybridge swimming pool with lubed up twink IPA lubed up twinks. I actually looked at this. None of the other big crowdfunding platforms have even considered IPLA. So it's not like they made some lubed up twinks, got fucking yeast infections from my lubed up twink IPA. No one, like no one else actually IPO'd. The only one I could find that IPO'd was a small European firm with a market cap of like

37 million, which is like very small by those standards called funded by me. It's not, it's, it's just like Patreon like wouldn't, I don't think Patreon's going to be able to IPO because it's not like they're going to make these like multi billions in profit ever. Like it says it's a tech company, but like what does it mean if you're a tech company use a computer? Like it's, it's, it's like the business they sort of disguise that the business model is like not they're saying that they're sort of this wonderful moral organization.

In fact, all the things they're not doing aren't natural for their business model anyway, right? Like you can see very much a smoke screen. It's, it's, it's parasitic, I guess would be the way I would maybe describe it. Well, it's, it's parasitic, but it's, it's not parasitic in like a big enough way, like an Amazon or a Facebook or an Apple. And so they're saying, oh, we're not like, we've designed this parasite that's like not great.

Are we great for designing a parasitic organization that could have been way worse if we were better at it? Yeah, this, it does kind of have the stink of walking out of the meeting where they found out they couldn't have an IPO and then saying, all right, everybody, big news, we are not going to pursue the IPO anymore. Yay. Here's, and this is what I found very fun was where they, they argued against the union.

They use their B Corp status to argue against the union. Good. Yeah. So they said it was more of a family, more or less. Yeah. Our perspective on this issue is born out of our work to build a new model for how a company can operate responsibly in society, they said. Kickstarter became a public benefit corporation in 2050.

This is about unionization in 2015. And we took this unusual step to ensure that for as long as it exists, it will continue to serve its mission, not just its shareholders. Again, its mission is to like, yeah, I don't know, fun to either like, yeah, like a Nazi coloring book or a stupid piece of plastic that'll end up in the garbage. Yeah. I mean, without that, what would Nazis be coloring in? Probably nothing.

And they'd be too busy trying to build the master race again. Yeah. So, you know, you think. Can't keep them busy. Yeah, exactly. A Nazi busy box. Sure, the stuff they're coloring in is racist, but it stops them from doing actually racist stuff.

So when we make decisions, we are legally obligated to think about all of the other stakeholders involved, including our staff and the wider world of artists and creators and society as a whole. We're still actively building this new structure and working to prove it's not only viable, but a new path forward. And Alice hears where the bit you said comes in. We want to do this all together as one team. Yes, you don't need a union.

It's going to get in the way of our beautiful relationship, but we have to gather. We have a little document that says we're going to think about you. What more do you want? Yeah. Why do you need a union when we're all in this big hive? It's going to get in the way of you serving the queen. That's right. Why do you need a union when we're all in this big swimming pool full of twins?

I mean, that is a good question, to be honest. So, they said the union framework is inherently adversarial, which doesn't reflect who we are as a company, how we interact, how we make decisions or where we need to go. We believe that in many ways it would set us back and that the us versus them binary already has. It's a good scam. You got to admit not being in a union is a kind of non-binary. That's right.

They're so progressive over there. That is pretty cool, actually. But you can see it is such a good scam. Or you can say, you know, we are going to consider, but we are going to consider everyone. We're going to consider society and artists, but we are going to do the considering. It's going to be us who considers.

It's pretty good. And it goes hand in hand with the actual function of the site, which is not explicitly endorsing or condemning anything that appears on it, never giving any guarantee that anything will ever come of any money you ever give them. Keeping everything at arm's length. Just to say, hey, I'm just some, there's a really good post on Twitter, and I forget who's posted it. I'm so sorry.

Don't kill me. Don't shoot me in the head. It's time to cancel, Jesse. For once and for all. The very good post is like, I think it's a gal talking about her boyfriend who is sort of a small guy and would become very drunk and antagonistic at the bar. I'm just a little guy.

I'm just a little one. I can't remember if I'm making this up. Does he also say it's my birthday? I can't remember what he says. Yes. He like gets in a fight with a big guy. And then as soon as he's about to get his ass beat, he goes, I'm just a little guy.

I'm just a little birthday boy. It's my birthday. I'm just a little birthday boy. That's Kickstarter. That's Kickstarter. Oh, the stuff on my side is really Nazi-ish. Oh, no. I'm just a little, I don't know.

You're just a payment pro. I don't know. What is that? Yeah. Like, we're just, look, we're a B Corp. We like, you know, for every, for every, look, for every Nazi coloring book funded, we do plan to tree.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's pretty cool. We hate trees. The litany of comments on every failed project that's like, I hereby invoke my rights under the Kickstarter terms of service to have my money refunded, just, just people just spitting into the damn wind.

And, and Kickstarter going, I don't know what to tell you, man, we're not a store. So I, you know, we're just, we're hanging it. It looks like a store and we take your money, like a store would take your money. And there's pretty much the implicit promise of lots of products and or services coming your way after the money is deposited.

However, that being said, you know, it's all, it's different. Trust me, it's different for some reason. It's different from the, even it is. It's more like a claw machine. Yeah. I think. Yeah. It's, you, you might get something.

Cool. Like I'm kicked out of support. Like, oh, when I ordered this coloring book, I understood that they would just be sexy children. I did not think they would be sexy Nazi children. Yeah. What do you think? I have some kind of freak.

Yeah. That's right. A different kind of freak. So I've got a couple. I think like this, this sets up, I think, like that this is a company that is very, very good at making itself look like it is benignly performing that an activity, not of social benefit, because it is democratizing the access to products.

It's, it's because it's new. Yeah, you know, it's a country that's very, very good. Gotcha. You no longer have to decide. No, it's not that the fat cats in Wall Street are no longer going to decide what like brand of wallet you get. Now you can decide and it just so happens that the same people who will be doing that have turned to this in order for to get investment

that they don't have to give away profit for. They can just give away products. Right. You know. And that's what existing companies do this, I think, increasingly. So, well, also, I mean, the idea of what a company that produces products is, I think has somewhat changed, specifically with the advent of Amazon and its, and its domination over everything else, because, you know,

in the old days, when I was a youth, you would go to the store and you would buy the one brand of, you know, a barbell, for instance. But now you go on Amazon, you type in barbell, you see all of the ones that you want are gone or sold by a third party or are used or whatever, and you get the Aliexpress version or you get the version of, I don't even know what it is, you get the Sporzon version that, yeah, that's going to be coming over from Hong Kong in four months or maybe it will never do that and they have your money anyways, right?

And those companies, the more successful ones, I think, have also moved over to Kickstarter where they're saying, we've done this battery, we've done this type of USB cable or whatever. We need another type of USB cable when we want to get the manufacturing line started. So, if you'll just buy it upfront, we'll send it to you eventually. Who did that anchor do that, right? I think Anchor is one of the ones that... They had a Kickstarter, which is...

Are they also one of the ones that's been like kicked off Amazon for the reviews? That happened recently, like, I think Aki is one of them that's been kicked off Amazon for generating all these fake reviews by putting a little card in the package that says, please go on here and give us five stars and we'll give you a coupon off your next order or something like that. Oh, webcam is all key. Is it about to explode? I think, yeah. Well, you can't buy a replacement for it anymore though.

They've been totally wiped off of Amazon. Well, that's when they're more valuable now. That's right. That's right. So, we're going to put that on the rails. I'm going to be... I'm absolutely a sucker for that kind of thing. I will be walking through like Soho with the Aki webcam on a chain around my neck.

This is actually one of one. But that's actually like, to me, among the ways to use Kickstarter, that's actually maybe one of the most ethical ways to use it, which is if you are a small business, quote unquote, and you've been making products and people seem to like them well enough, going on to Kickstarter and saying, do enough of you want this particular... Do you want Lightning to USB-C? Do you want USB-C to micro USB or whatever? And if so, we'll make it.

That actually seems like an okay way to do this type of shit. But, and that doesn't speak well of Kickstarter, considering the rest of the stuff on there is like less good than that even, you know. And I think I've got an example, in fact, of a business that has, let's say, engaged in that kind of activity on Kickstarter. Which is the Nebia shower. You guys remember that one? Yeah.

A what? Yeah. So, that's the sex thing. No, it's a shower that doesn't work in Europe. Because, well, it doesn't work in... It's a different water voltage. More or less. It's because our showers tend to come out from like hip height and then go up,

whereas American showers tend to, what a country, come out from like more or less the top of the shower. So, it only works if your shower is connected at the top of the wall. I'm learning so much, the process of cultural exchange. Better experience, 70% less water, like thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to bring this thing to life. And they say, back in 2015, we had a big idea to create a shower that dramatically saves water while delivering a superior shower experience.

It doesn't work in Europe. It doesn't work in Europe. Fuck them. They deserve to smell. We took that idea. This is by Moen, right? Yeah. This is a...

Maybe after the fact they part... Yeah, or like Moen's like a Y Combinator, like their version, like the bathroom fixture version of a startup generator or whatever, they got together with... Aspen Combinator. Thank you. Thank you. So, it is something that has like the look of something that should already exist,

but why people got excited about it is sort of unique to this, right? Which is that it was endorsed by a celeb and we can't get enough of our celebs. It was endorsed by, for example, Eric Schmidt and Tim Cook and the CEO of Fitbit. But the thing is, right, after getting millions and millions and millions of dollars of investment from tech people who like... And the thing is, they get to invest in owning the profits of the Nebia Showerhead business. They still sell on Kickstarter so that you can sort of... You can put money into the organization on the same, like with the same amount of risk,

but what you get because you're not a rich guy is a showerhead. Yeah. And that's it. You get a showerhead, Tim Cook gets to make a lot of money. By the way, the money he's making is going to be yours. Don't say you get downsides. I need a showerhead. I mean, it's true.

Yeah. You do get the showerhead, but it seems to me, right, that when these kinds of transactions are facilitated on Kickstarter, which of course Kickstarter loves because they're able to promote them, their high value, they make the site more prestigious and all this, it was like, oh, wow, you can buy the showerhead that Tim Cook uses, that Tim Apple showers under. And the problem, of course, with this is even when you do... In best case scenario, you get the showerhead and you're like, damn, this is a pretty good ass showerhead or whatever you would say if you're taking a shower and you enjoy your experience.

I'd say that. That tracks. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense to you guys to say that as well. Oh, yeah. Because I don't know if that was a very good thing.

If anything, it's a classic Britishism. I love to go around the pub and talk about me showerhead. But even at that point, right, something goes wrong with the showerhead or whatever, it shows up and it's broken or anything like that. You've now completely forfeited any typical store consumer experience that you would expect. Taking a risk. You're taking a massive risk. Even if it shows up, like, shit goes wrong all the time.

It shows up and it's scratched or it doesn't work. Like you said, in Europe, the European butter situation was a huge deal for people just recently who backed this butter tin that had a nice place for a built-in knife or did it weigh as well? Did it weigh the butter? What was it doing? I think it had a rest for, like, I forget what it was. But we have different butter over here. We have butter in, like, long sticks.

And I guess you guys have different butter. I remember. I've worked with both butter as someone who crossed the Atlantic. I remember the stick butter. Wow. Right. Yeah. I'm kind of a man of the world.

You're a man of two mothers. Look at this guy over here. He's a couple of sticks of butter. But yeah, as you say, you have the long butter. We have the short butter. You know, hey, what are these guys going to make something in common, huh? That's just what speaks to how different we really are and why we'll never connect, you know? We're both using butter.

I learned an important lesson today. At the end of the day. But so they're not even prepared for different butter types, which would be like an extremely easy thing, I think, to fit. Now, I didn't know it. But if I'm making a butter thing, that might be my first search on Google. I was like, does everybody have the same like a butter and junk? Like just maybe give that a spin and see what happens.

Like getting the part where you're shipping stuff out and British guys are opening it and going, oh my God, this is like jamming the butter in the thing. Like you've got to figure that out well in advance. And there's no recourse for you. It's already in your house. You're fucked. Yeah. It's that it's that when you sort of take that relationship because the thing is so much of like

that there's this contract, right? There's this assumed contract you have of living in like a consumerist society, right? Which is you're going to get the stuff and the stuff is going to do something for you. And if it doesn't do something for you, you can demand satisfaction. This is pretty much the only part of your life where you have any power. Have power. That's cool. That's awesome is I can sort of I can determine the specifics of my butter dish situation.

You just have you just have power over customer service. Yeah, that's the only power. It seems like what's what's happened is like even in this case, right? It's like, well, because you're now you're now purchasing your products on kind of an investment basis, right? You now can no longer return the butter dish. This is no, but it doesn't make you feel like an investment because you're the same as those by cell, etc.

It's the same phenomenon of crypto. Now you're not you're not just a guy who gets a thing in the mail and has to deal with whether he likes it or not. You now also have to be a booster for the product so that you don't feel like a fucking moron for buying the thing a year in advance of when you use it. Invest a lot of things. Yeah, it is. That's exactly what it is.

It's turning the it's turning the normal that that last promise that sort of we have for our society is the bit of our lives we control. It's taking that away. Yeah, it's very funny. It's like about like, do you want to like do you want to rent an apartment for like an extortion and amount of money or do you want to be a cool digital nomad? On a limited fan. Even a man, yeah.

You used to be able to invest in real stuff, you know, the boomers. They could just like buy a house and it would be like winning the lottery eventually. But can you just imagine if like back in the day you were buying houses, but then you had to go around just like slapping a house on the side and then just going like, oh, these houses are great. Ha, you should really, you should buy one of these. In fact, you should buy several. You should get into these. They're great.

Like, oh man, since I bought this house, my life has changed. You know, you should get into this. I think that's that's that's a good example of that. I have one, one more on deck. Are there are there any sort of kick kicking around your mind that you that you want to go through or shall we do shall we do my second one? I mean, you know, we sort of sketched out some some different types. Yeah, please take us through.

So recently one, a couple of these actually are both pretty recent that came up where and we talked about this earlier, the the guys who just seem to have the disease of wanting to invent things where sometimes it's that they have a specific problem in their own lives that they believe everyone else is also having and they're completely wrong about what that is. Well, my Twinks keep getting this yeast infection from my IPA pool. Has this ever happened to you? That must be a better way. And so like there's this one we did a couple of weeks ago.

Mike, this was the toilet seat. Already, I love it. But there's a lot of toilet stuff on Kickstarter as well. I can't overemphasize it, but there's like a lot of Kickstarter. That's when people have like that big I'm going to be an investor. It is wild. They're just pushing out a shit. So this is a guy who was having some some kind of problem or is like really concerned about

the amount of poop particles that are flying around in. So the thing is called poopy. I'm already invested. He knocked it out of the park with the name. Okay. This product was absolutely designed by an American. There's no there's just something so grating to my ear about poopy that it's just yeah. It could have been a Dutch person.

That's true. Actually, he actually lives in Greece. Yo, those guys are fucked up. It's a continental European thing. I clocked that immediately. It's a special thing. It does your shit. Blacks, you can use it as face paint.

He says after many fights with my sisters and mother about the toilet seat that I would never pick up when I was in the bathroom, then always was problem. The smell inside the bathroom that every time is natural to be right. Yep. So he's okay. Maybe he is Dutch. So basically it so he's the problem you identified is that you you flush the toilet and then all of the poop goes up into the air, which may be true, may not be true.

I don't care one way or the other what happens after it comes out of my ass. I'll eat shit all day long. Somebody else's problem. But what he's designed is that so the typical toilet seat that actually covers the whole thing. Imagine a lid covering a pot. We're all familiar with how this works. What if you you you sliced it down the middle and then again on the two sides to create sort of a an articulating seat where you could piss through the top of the toilet seat.

And then if you wanted to shit, it would open up all the way like a like a. It's like the it's like the Ghostbusters trap. Yeah. That's what it is exactly right. And they're in every house now. You can't move for it. But it sounds very hygienic. I don't see it going wrong.

No. He's also put the we call them ass gaskets. The papers that you put down on the seat if you're in like a rest stop or whatever. So that you don't you don't share ass particles with someone else. Don't want to be sharing those. What am I gay? That another guy said this is someone who understands like truck stop bathroom cruising but just thinks that it's sharing a toilet seat without using.

Um, he's also put that inside the toilet and the I couldn't understand because the video was a little bit strange and also he pours orange liquid in there to demonstrate. But I think what he's created is like two separate caverns for the piss and the shit. So the piss and the shit don't even go to the same place until it's like well inside the toilet. So it mixes what Naomi Wolfe was trying to work on. Exactly. It's a religious thing. You've got to separate the piss and shit.

Yeah. That's right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. So like that guy just has something else going on that I can't relate to. And he's just tinkering all of the time and poured so much money into it. Yeah, piss and shit and piss and shit.

I put blood piss and shit into this company. He's going to get so you got to spend money to make money is the thing. Yeah. And you know, it we I guess it would be unfair for us to talk about Kickstarter without mentioning the politics of the projects that so often pop up. And I guess it sort of decreased a little bit now with Biden in office. Trump was a catalyst for junk to be spewed all over the place, whether it was pro or con. A lot of times it was easier to do against Trump.

Like the book by the Krasenstein guys is probably the most the most famous thing ever to come out of Kickstarter. It's got to be right. Although I think people love people love doing like activism with their dollars and stuff. And like all the Trump campaigns and stuff were just like fucking so great for that because it was just like one every minute was just like make America great again in Arabic hat. Yeah. Like a red hat and it's just fucking all junk, man.

Well, that's like everything, everything here with like EU stuff. Like the FPP people are like completely insane. And they're always designing a new fucking t-shirt that says like I still love EU or whatever. And yeah, like like dog. One of the things that I think like you guys have talked about every version of cards against humanity that is possible to create. My favorite one, of course, is I think this was like from a couple of years ago. It was like the Trump the Trumpy cards against humanity.

I kind of remember that one. Let's see. There's I remember there was one that was for a very specific law school that was that was recent. There was also the Mike was it was it was it Welsh? Like they're all hyper specific cards against humanity. References where we just read them and go, man. I hope this clicks for whoever the target audience is. Very specific niche.

Just out of the IBS edition. Because it's so easy to do with cards against humanity. Because you just have to kick stuff. You just have to be like, you just have to be like, well, I'm going to write down some some cards then, you know, print them and cut them out. And then, you know, hopefully I become a millionaire. I assume that's how it works. Really low risk, high reward.

And they know that's all arbitrage, baby. Yeah, I better become a millionaire just by translating that into Russian. Maybe I should get into that. Did copyright. Yeah, I copyrighted it. Actually, I should copyright my idea now. Do you want to work as a translator? I'll give you 50 pounds.

Sorry, so what this is? So we have our our political activism ones. Yeah, it's not just similar from if you've ever been to like a like a park where they've set up the little container. Yeah, and me neither. I'm speculating here. I kind of sometimes you can pull up a webcam feed of a park and that's pretty it's pretty much why would I go to a park?

What am I a paedophile? I don't know why you're looking at a web cafe parking. That's my question. I'm an agoraphobic paedophile. They've got like the two containers of cigarette butts. And one of them is like put the cigarette button here if you like baby Yoda and then put the cigarette button here if you don't like baby Yoda. And then you're just kind of looking at your cigarette button.

This one, if you easily manipulate it, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, wait a minute. It's a way to like pull smokers. Yeah, yeah. And that's that's important data that is going straight to Democrat HQ. They're using that to triangulate policy. That's a Kickstarter in a nutshell. You you you put your five dollars over here.

If you want to do the COVID mask with the rainbow on it and you put your five dollars over here, if you want the COVID mask with the rainbow on it with the the red circle in the line going through the rainbow as well. You know, that's basically what it's for at this point for a lot of people. Yeah, just channel just channels like all of the sort of political innervation through just like signs you could vote to buy. Why not? It's just as good as doing the other thing.

What are you going to do? Vote? What are you stupid? Takes forever. Yeah. Who has time? You got to look number one, right? After the whole thing of getting up, you have to look up where the polling place is.

Hey, with the Republicans in power, who knows what kind of documentation you need to bring there? You got to get your you got to get your your whole extended family there taking a picture with you saying, yep, this guy, he's legit. And then you have to find out where it is. Number one, you got to get there. Okay.

Like I'm made of time and gas ain't free and it's not getting cheaper. And then once you're there, you got to look, you got to read every single line of that thing and like come on, just like make a few less of these. And then once you've done that, you've got to tick the thing. You got to make sure the pencil works. You got to tick the thing. You got to get the little I voted sticker and then you got to take a selfie with the I voted.

It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Well, you can. I'm actually doing a Kickstarter for I voted stickers, but with a red circle with a line through it. But I don't. So I think. GM GM GM copyright. When Kickstarter goes away, I think the things that I will probably miss the most

are the ones by people who, as I've said before, the nice way of putting it is just that they've got something else going on altogether. I can't relate to them in any way. I don't know what's happening in their heads. It's very fascinating to me. I wouldn't tell them face to face that it sucks or that they suck or whatever. I want them to keep doing what they're doing because it is interesting. So there's a guy who's done several projects on Kickstarter.

His name is James M P Q and he has projects on Kickstarter such as fresh clean air shield, roads lasting for generations, fire kill line, your very own world networking web page. I have a question. Roads lasting for generations. Is he trying to kickstart a new road network for whatever he lives? So this was where he wants to make roads out of plastic, I think. There was one of the one of the similar idea on the blog like many, many years ago. And it was a solar roadways where they like put like LEDs in the road and stuff.

And they kept they kept like exploding. They set up they set up like a little test area, I think in Arizona or something and like it exploded or people like vandalized it all the time and it said they thought that the the L in LEDs, they wrote the L in LED lowercase. And so they'd ended up getting the wrong shipment. Oh boy, how many times classic this guy. The one thing that we talked about a few years ago, I think from him was called fire kill line. And of course, he correctly identified climate change is really it's really

screwing up this whole crazy planet and the wildfires are getting out of hand. So his thought was I'm making a project and and what it is is it's like somehow he was adding fire extinguishing systems to our existing power grid, I think. So think about it. Where is power pretty much everywhere, right? You look up, there it is above our heads. OK, what if there was a bunch of like fire extinguishers up there that could go off when there was a fire?

Simple, right? Why didn't anyone else think of this, you know? And he's got this massive plan along with the video. And the cool thing about James is his signature is adding like a sexy lady from Fiverr. I was just looking at that and the bad photoshop. I'm going to try to bring it up on my screen so you can see it, but it's very it's very good. And that's his signature thing. No matter what it is, there's going to be a nice looking gal on there to let you know this

project is serious. Nice looking gal like this project. You might as well do it also. It's a very kind of like 1990s way of advertising the thing, which is just like, hey, you know, there's if you could get Kathy Ireland, you know, in your corner there. Right. Oh, wow, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Look at that, man. Oh, God. Huffle, huffle. I love that she's not even that sexy. She's on fire. Like you see this normal looking woman. She's a girl next door type. My love loves this.

Yeah. You see this like your friend's mom from school. Like she thinks, yeah, to be fair, that is my type. But I'm trying to look at this through the eyes of the average man. Someone who's not a milk obsessed psycho, you know, the milk. I kind of get that though, right? Which is like this is a place where a lot of people who would have been eccentric inventors. It's like a database of them where you get to, they've sort of put their,

they've put themselves into a sort of museum. And Kickstarter's main actual benefit to society is that it curates that museum. That's correct. Yeah, it's, you know, cameo has done something similar. You go on, you pay for the videos from celebrities. And of course, the greatest proportion of celebrities who are willing to talk into their phone for 50 seconds for even a couple hundred dollars, are going to be maybe the weirdest ones and the ones that it's most interesting

to hear from on a sort of updated basis. But cameo has sort of closed off this, this like sideshow aspect to the public where, you know, once upon a time it was very easy to go and look video by video by video. This is like this guy's whole day. This is the guy who guest starred on an episode of Fresh Prince or whatever. This is his whole day is like doing these videos to people and sounding progressively more unhinged.

And then you're really wondering what is this guy, what does he need the $13 for? Like, why is this his whole life? And it's fascinating to think about Kickstarter can't close this off to the public because it's the necessary aspect of the grift. You have to be able to see this guy who wants 16.8 million dollars to put fire extinguishers in the power grid. Because if they close it off, then he'll never get the money

and they'll never get their 10%, you know. And the great thing is it would cost more for Kickstarter to vet their projects to make sure the only the boring ones that make the money go through as opposed to this cornucopia of unusual ones. That's right. Because there's a very, you know, we're experiencing a real deficit of characters, I think. And it's good that they are being collected.

Yes, yeah. The easiest way to find them is Kickstarter will, they actually will do something where it's like projects we love, which is sort of the editor's choice version of Kickstarter. You got to click X. I clicked X on that one. The number one thing you do is click X on them. I love doing that with them.

Please, please don't look at all the awful shit that we have on here. The BSOP Kickstarter. I was like, no, give me well, baby. Yeah. Everyone's choice. Give me well. Oh, when I was looking for a couple of Kickstarter's for this one, I did find one.

I did have to click off of projects we love to find the one that I liked. Yeah. Yeah. Let's hear it. What is it? OK. It's called the card. OK.

OK. Yeah. OK. All right. Hello, everyone. We appreciate you checking out our page, which I think is good. That's got my attention.

And yeah, no problem. It's just like it's friendly. It's grabbed me already. This feels personal to me. And I appreciate that they went out of their way. Hey, I am checking out the page. OK, cool. It truly means the world to us.

How did they know that? It truly means the world to us as we're excited to launch the QR card. If you're down, we'd love to share our story with you. And we promise to keep it short and sweet. Now, let's get to it. I'm hooked. I don't know about you guys. Oh, boy.

Yeah. When figuring out where to start with this story, we decided to begin with how we're both huge fans of business, entrepreneurship, and networking. Oh, that's Matt Hancock. They're huge fans of business. Sorry. That's one more little Matt Hancock fact.

At one point, the argument over Brexit, Boris Johnson was like, yeah, fuck business. We're going to do Brexit. And then Matt Hancock says, I don't think you should say that about business. It was so good. Defending the owner of business like it's his girlfriend. He's definitely a 12-year-old kid who got big, I think. Business won't hear that, but your friends that are businesses will hear that.

We've done it. We've both done it for years now. Owning various businesses, attending tons of network events, exchanging business cards, et cetera. You know how it goes. Oh, no. It's a business card that's just a QR code. Yes, sir.

You could just make that yourself. You can make a QR code and then just get it printed on a business card. Why do it yourself? Steven and Christopher are willing to take care of all the dirty work for you. And for $50, you can get one yourself. Oh, my God. You can get a piece of plastic with a QR code on it, and then you can attach your phone number to that QR code.

So instead of giving someone your phone number, you can be like, hey, I'd love to give you my contact details. Why don't you take a picture of this piece of plastic and let your phone do the work? I actually did something like this recently, not did any legitimate business. I mean, what I did was I got a new dishwasher, and I was tricked by this because in the thing,

they had a little warranty card that says, register and extend your warranty by one second. And that's really useful if that one second is when it breaks, right? Because then you're going to be calling up these guys. So it says you can go online or you can call a number. Who wants to do that? Or you could scan this QR code, and that'll register your thing. And I was like, this is perfect.

There must be some information on this QR code, on this sheet of paper, where it's like, this is where we delivered the dishwasher to, this is when it was purchased, all that other kind of shit, and I can just wipe my hands of the whole process, right? Wrong. What happened was is I took a picture of it and then texted it to a number,

and then the number sent back to me the link to the website. The website? Which I'm now filling out on my fucking phone instead of the laptop. Like an idiot. That's so good. That's so good. You got tricked by a dishwasher.

I've been tricked by a simple machine, an infernal machine. Plus, I got stuck in it and my step-brother walked in, and then, oh, hell broke loose. He hates to see that. I'm now just imagining the fucking scene in American Psycho, where they're all comparing business cards, but it's all just QR codes. But they will let QR codes are in a slightly different shade of black,

and it's like, why does Bryce prefer a Van Patten's QR code to mine? Well, essentially, they say, but they say they're saving the world too, you know, they're not just saving the time. The fucking $50 for the card was the early bird price, the $75. Under that, it says, save the trees. Business cards kill thousands of trees every year and destroy miles and miles of forest. Yeah, not see business cards,

but it's in its inventory against trees. It's the business cards doing that. They just form themselves out of trees to respond to demand. Yeah, do you know what your business cards are doing at night? There's a clear cutting. They're clear cutting in the rain. Yeah, your business card's a secretly Canadian, and they're clear cutting forest.

Kind of a gambit X-Men situation, where somebody's like, winging the business cards through the, and it's like, damn, look at all those fucking trees. He's after Wolverine again. The whole thing is like, yeah, it's just $75, a small price to pay for saving the planet with this piece of plastic crap that you can buy. We're giving everyone in Gaza a special QR business card.

So the QR card is the card of a lifetime. This card will be the only card you'll ever need because of how it saves the environment. And that's your phone number or address changes. Well, I think you upload it to like an app, and so you'd have to change it on an app. It's like, it's a work through solution to the problem of giving your phone number out via a card,

and it sort of works to do that. Why don't I just have the QR code on your phone, and you can just show it to people. Or just say, or you know what most people do now, because we all have phones, because everyone's got one of these freaking smartphones in their pockets, in my opinion, these days. So people, the phones are getting smarter,

but the people are not. Ooh, what's wrong with that? Yeah, well, yeah, we don't, and so now if you want to, if you're in a networking event, you can just say, hey, why don't you put your number, my number in your phone, and then you can text me later. And they're like, what if, but what if we got to make a piece of plastic that allowed us to profit

from that interaction? I really want like an app that's like, it does, it's a digital version of the keys in the bowl thing for swingers parties. Do you know how many trees are cut down every year to make cocky bowls out of all the old growth rosewood? No, it's environmentally conscious, because it's made using the burned remnants of like solar rows.

That's actually good. That's actually good, I think. So with the QR card, you can say goodbye to spending thousands of dollars on cards that nobody wants. Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars. How many business cards do you need?

Especially when you could just give someone your number and they could put it in your phone. A classic fucking example of these guys saying like, this is a problem local to me, but this must be a huge problem. Like the guys who are like, what's another example of that shit, Jesse? Like, well, it's the guys doing the black and white

carrying the hose and bucket and whatever to the car to wash the car. It's like, hey, I just make more than one trip or I go through the car wash. I don't know, your world is different from mine. Have you not researched the market about business cards? Do you not realize you can probably search business cards coupon and get 10,000 of them?

You get like fucking 10,000 for like a dollar. Just change supplier each time. Yeah, why do you think this? Or are you just tricking me in which case? I don't like being tricked. Yeah, I don't like being tricked. Fool me once. Shame on you.

Yeah, that's right. Fool me twice. I'll get to check my cards. I don't like being tricked. You should think again before trying to trick someone who owns over $10,000 worth of Dogecoin. Okay? I think they're at $9,000, but hey, look,

it's a lot of Dogecoin. It's a lot of Dogecoin, all right, buddy? And if that doesn't get you, I have thousands of dollars worth of business cards and I will use them to TP your house. Yeah, that's right. Only a very small handful of consumer-grade appliances have ever been able to say that they've tricked me.

Okay, pal, so you better get in line. What are you, stupid? You don't want to risk being stupider than a dishwasher. Because if I get one over on you, buddy, that's straight where you're going, bottom of the totem pole. It's me, dishwasher, you. And so on this page it says the card for the realtor.

Okay, now realtors, that's a category of person who's meeting a lot of people, right? But the realtor is almost always going to be sucked into this little multi-level marketing scheme of their own ecosystem where like, their broker has a website for them, they've got signs all over town. Is that also a place where you're going to be handing out

cards to houses? You're not going to do that. You literally can just tell someone your phone number or if you want to use a QR code, there's an app that you can use that flashes a QR code on your phone. They're literally the piece of plastic in this transaction that costs $75 is at no point necessary.

It's for people who can't Google someone's name and find out like the rules. How the fuck is it $75? That actually doesn't make sense. Yeah, why would that be the case? Why is it $75? Plastic is an inexpensive material, like hotel key cards are made out of fucking plastic.

Credit cards, like every- Hey, you ever try losing one of those at a Ramada? They charge you out the nose. They charge you up to a dollar for that. It does say if you want a logo on the front of your card, make sure to hit the add-on button. So the logo on the card not included in the $75 price tag for the card.

$75 for the base model, if you want add-ons. That's, come on, you want the luxury. If you want to make an impression that you're a gigantic fucking moron, if you want people to know that you're really easy to trick, it's a perfect product for you. That's right. You say, hey, you join the dishwasher, buddy, you're going to get one over on there.

It's really killed the wallet inspection game because there's nothing to inspect anymore. It's just a QR code. Yeah, I need this QR. So I noticed even going for a while. So I think it's probably time to bring our festivities here to a close. So I guess I just want to say, Mike and Jesse, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us today.

Thanks for having us. This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed sounding really smart and impressing upon your audience, our vast knowledge of not only kickstart, but I think British politics is why I think people were pretty much vying to what we were saying, right? You guys are basically ready to join the House of Lords. You can put on the fancy cloak they wear.

Just real quick. What is that? Is that... Now, what is... Do I need to... It's our Senate. But it's our Senate. It's not as important as the Senate.

You get appointed to it. And also you can be a hereditary. It's pretty ugly. Not good. You guys have to go in and clean it up. That's your next task. Let's go, Mike. Let's go.

Your hereditary period sucks. Should I start recording? Yeah. By the way, if you guys want to join the mailing list to come on again, you should scan the QR code that's on your screen now. So, yeah, I guess we're... Now we've had our pre-show chat. I guess we're ready to start recording and kick this thing off, huh?

All right. I'm ready. Three, two, one, rock. It would be funny to end it there, but I do have to say, please definitely tune in to Your Kickstarter Sucks. It's a lot of fun. It's...

We have a lot of fun on this show. Yeah, we have a lot of fun. I'm going to turn my chair around to say it. It's starting to get serious for a second. Do tune in to Your Kickstarter Sucks. It's a great deal of fun. And they talk a lot more about a lot more silly kick starters. Wait, what?

Yeah, that's right. That's a lot of what they do on there. They have some fun, too, though. Oh, okay. All right. It's not all business. It's not all business. No one cares.

It's not all balance sheets and ROI over at Your Kickstarter Sucks. We do actually... We have a few japs in there. Yeah, they get a couple of laughs in. It's mostly investment advice, but from time to time. And by the way, I have to stress. It is investment advice. Yeah, this podcast is not investment advice.

This is their podcast. Their podcast is investment advice. Who, boy, is it actionably investment advice that you should take in trust? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's legally binding. That's legally binding. And if it goes wrong, then you know what?

You can talk to their lawyers. Yeah, you can talk to that dishwasher. Yeah, talk to that. Yeah, the dishwasher told me to invest in Dogecoin. I don't know what you're talking about. It's true. It's true. And on Kickstarter, you can get a physical Dogecoin now.

That's true. So check that out as well. Get tired of the show. Get a little coin. Flip it around. Who cares? Do whatever you want. Yeah, go spend it.

Don't spend it all in one place, though. And also, don't forget, we have a Patreon, second episode every week, five bucks a month. It's a steal at any price. This week, we have once again watched a movie about the early medieval period with Patrick Wyman and Eleanor Yonega. We had a great time doing that, so do check that out.

Anyway, we will see you in a couple of days, and then you won't see me on the next free episode because I'm going to be on vacation. Yeah, that's all right. So he's going to the North. Yeah, that's right. That's where I'm going. I will not say specifically where.

Riley is going to be eating fancy meals. Yes, that's true. Yeah, all right. So if you're wondering where Riley is, just start going around fancy restaurants in the North. Yeah, you'll find me at one of them. Anyway, you will. Guys, thank you so much for coming on once again.

It's been a blast. And thank you for listening. A hoot. We'll see you in a few. Bye. Bye.