Crowdfunding for Spite, Yikes...
The motivation to crowdfund can come from a lot of different places: charity, novelty, support & friendship, and necessity. But, one story made me realize that there is one more motivation out there that you don't think as much about: spite, pure, unfiltered, frothing-at-the-mouth spite.
Many months ago, the comedy website The Oatmeal put up a post complaining about a competing website, FunnyJunk, that was using their content.
And, recently, FunnyJunk responded to the post with an accusation of defamation, and they requested a $20,000 settlement.
By the title of this article, what do you think The Oatmeal did?
Well, whatever you are guessing, I'm sure wasn't this...
The Oatmeal posted an annotated reaction blog post , and set up an account on a crowdfunding website.
This is in the description of the crowdfunding campaign:
Instead of mailing the owner of FunnyJunk the money, I'm going to send the above drawing of his mother. I'm going to try and raise $20,000 and instead send it to the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society.
The campaign not only met its $20,000 goal; it raised over $180,000!
Now, there's not much more to say about this particular story, but it does bring up some immediate questions:
- Should crowdfunding platforms allow campaigns that are by design meant to embarrass and upset?
- Does anger and frustration play a larger role in crowdfunding than we thought?
- When is it ok to mock someone through crowdfunding?
Looking forward to your comments below...
Also, Reach out to us at support.dailycrowdsource.com [our new support portal is powered by Freshdesk!]