Thursday, March 14, 2013

Had the better, more sensible angels of my nature not intervened last Friday, I would’ve saddled myself with a $500 bet on yet another Kickstarter project. That’s what it is, after all–a wager that the project creator will follow through and actually deliver a product. My first bet was decidedly underwhelming, a wallet masquerading as a “small, sad piece of elastic.” The second bet I placed–on another wallet, incidentally, for $24–turned out to be a small, sad piece of neoprene with a hole cut into its side, and the irony was not lost on me.

But still I persist, with six projects in tow, the latest being $20 invested in a potential future of never having to tie my shoes again. It won’t be the last time I spend money on Kickstater, either, and I say this unapologetically. This hoodie, for instance, was like catnip to me, and I don’t even wear hoodies. No, it’s the idea that’s so alluring.

It goes beyond wallets and laces and hoodies. It’s my small retort to the devils within and without–my reply to outsourcing and offshoring, my answer to the modern tapestry of reality television, fast food, and vapid news cycles. These projects hearken back to a time before all this. They evoke the frontier and a reclamation of good ol’ American ingenuity. Or perhaps I’m deluding myself and touching the stove not once, not twice, but six or seven times. There may even be a stove designed on Kickstarter to be touched eight times, in which case I’ve likely backed it already.