Who Do You Kickstart?

And if people want to pay thousands of dollars for walk-on roles in vanity projects, let them! Who are they hurting? It’s not like the money people spend supporting The Canyons is money they’d otherwise spend supporting, say, my friend Kat Hunt’s movie What’s Revenge. Or maybe they are — the dollars we all have to support the arts are finite (or nonexistent.) But I would go crazy (crazier) if I let myself go around believing that Kickstarter — or success, in general — is a zero-sum game.

Emily Gould chews over Bret Easton Ellis’s Kickstarter campaign and argues that it’s much more exciting to support an unknown than a someone with a big name. Which — I agree! I have given lots of single $5 donations to random Kickstarter campaigns simply because I thought an idea was interesting. Support the unknowns!

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