Times are indeed a-changing as crowdfunding buys Bob a bed
Maybe it all started with the potato salad.
Remember when a guy on Kickstarter asked for US$10 to make a potato salad, and ended up with $55,492? It was stupid and amazing all at once.
Is this what crowdfunding has come to?
Answer: It appears so. Maybe right at this very moment, Bob Dylan could be opening up a Sleep Number adjustable bed because ClickHole, the clickbait-mocking spinoff of the Onion, launched a GoFundMe titled Let’s Give Bob Dylan a Nice Bed!
“Bob Dylan is probably America’s most prolific and influential musician, so one of our writers, Steve Etheridge, thought it was time we all gave something back to him,” ClickHole editor Jermaine Affonso said in an email. “We wanted to thank The Man in the Hat for everything he’s given us.”
This makes no sense, of course: Bob Dylan certainly has a bed. A very nice one, we presume, maybe in the same room where he keeps his 10 Grammys or Presidential Medal of Freedom. Also, no one calls him The Man in the Hat.
And yet, 156 people donated a total of $1,555 — enough to get Bob his fancy mattress, bed frame and wireless remote control.
“I cannot believe I am doing this when there are starving children in Africa,” one contributor wrote.
“Keep on sleepin’ on, Mr. Dylan!” said another.
Per Twitter, the bed arrived at Columbia Records on Aug. 18.
Zack Brown, the man behind the potato salad Kickstarter, is not surprised. Since his effort, crowdfunding for comedic purposes has become a widely appreciated gimmick. 2,828 backers raised $65,783 to get the music group Run the Jewels to make an album of cat noises; 915 people bought a plastic rectangle to substitute for their phone (“Never again experience the unsettling feeling of flesh on flesh when closing your hand.”).
Brown explains it this way: the Facebook people (AKA most people) don’t get it. But the Reddit people — the ones who spend a lot of time immersed in Internet subcultures — think it’s funny that other people don’t get it. The more money that goes to a ridiculous prank, the funnier it becomes.
“It’s their inside joke,” Brown said. “They get to make it more absurd by driving up the total.”
John Oliver recently used his Last Week Tonight platform to start his very own donation-accepting church. The stunt was a jab at how the IRS makes it easy for scamming televangelists to take money from strangers, tax free.
He actually went through the steps of forming his church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, and gave it a New York City P.O. box and phone number (1-800-THIS-IS-LEGAL) where people can donate.
HBO wouldn’t say how much money has been sent in. But if comedy colleague Stephen Colbert is any example, it could be quite a sum. Colbert’s effort to mock campaign finance by creating a SuperPAC brought in $773,704.83 in donations.
It was eventually distributed to Hurricane Sandy relief, the Yellow Ribbon Fund and two political transparency groups. The fine print on OurLadyOfPerpetualExemption.com says those donations will meet a similar fate. “Upon dissolution, any assets belonging to the Church at that time will be distributed to Doctors Without Borders.”
But Oliver never mentioned that on the show, just like the Potato Salad Kickstarter didn’t say the money would eventually go to an organization called the Columbus Foundation.
The people who donate to a prank like this do so because: 1. it made them laugh; 2. they have the money.
Donating money is more popular in the U.S. than any other country in the world. In 2014, Americans donated $358.38 billion to charity organizations, a 7.1 per cent increase from the previous year, according to Giving USA.
The improving economy is part of it. But it also helps that it’s so easy to make donations online.
For people with disposable income it begs the question: Are you putting your money where the savvy messaging is, or where it’s needed most?
Then again, if Brown set out to raise money for the Columbus Foundation instead of potato salad, could he have raised the $55,000?