Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

As I'm writing this post, IndieGoGo donation page for Karen Kline has raised more than $365K. As many of us would agree, something like this has happened before on occasion and I wanted to get a list going and document similar events or instances in the recent years.

On a related note, there are a few terms that have been associated with spontaneous / intensive fundraising phenomenon, the biggest one being "crowdfunding" (wiki), "friendraising" (wiki) and "moneybomb" (wiki / usually for political campaigns).

Here it goes, I'll start with the most obvious one:

The Oatmeal fundraiser (2012): $208,000+ / donation page link

This Kickstarter for Double Fine Adventure's video game project (link) was huge on Reddit and received over 3.3 million dollars.

The "Tropes vs Women" feminist video blog Kickstarter (link) raised over $158,000 after the woman was attacked for starting the pledge page.

The LED bike light Kickstarter (link) got over $215,000 after it reached the front page of Reddit (link).

Troll Kickstarter project:

The Wikipedia entry for Kickstarter has this handy list:

[Rank] [Dollars earned] [Name] [Per cent funded] [Total contributers] [Date Funded]

1 10,266,845 Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android Pebble Technology Design 10,266 68,928 2012-05-18
2 3,336,371 Double Fine Adventure Double Fine and 2 Player Productions Video Games 834 87,142 2012-03-13
3 2,933,252 Wasteland 2 InXile Entertainment Video Games 325 61,290 2012-04-17
4 1,836,447 Shadowrun Returns Harebrained Schemes LLC Video Games 459 38,276 2012-04-29
5 1,464,706 Elevation Dock: The Best Dock For iPhone Casey Hopkins Design 1,952 12,521 2012-02-11
6 1,254,120 The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive Rich Burlew Comics 2,171 14,952 2012-02-21
7 1,192,793 Amanda Palmer: The new RECORD, ART BOOK, and TOUR Amanda Palmer Music 1,192 24,883 2012-05-31
8 942,578 TikTok+LunaTik Multi-Touch Watch Kits Scott Wilson Design 6,283 13,512 2010-12-16
9 938,771 Hidden Radio & BlueTooth Speaker John VDN + Vitor Santa Maria Design 751 5,358 2012-01-18
10 923,680 Ogre Designer's Edition Steve Jackson Games Board & Card Games 4,618 5,512 2012-05-11

Their has also been the BronyCon Documentary which earned more than $320,000, more than than 5 times its original goal of $60,000.

Could charity projects be considered as well? The Humble Indie Bundle always pulls in a decent amount of funds.

So…

There's a lot going on with this, then?

There is always the usual horror stuff on here too like my one. I am curious as to how the others raised so much?

http://forums.somethingawful.com/dictionary.php?act=3&topicid=16
fiestacat meme is born, becomes popular, goons pay in advance to have plush dolls made, poster absconds with money

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful#Hurricane_Katrina_charity
goons raise a shitload of scratch for Katrina victims, paypal freezes account and pisses in everyone's faces

wtf! nessy isnt real, is she O_O. I hope this is just a scam….

I think possibly what kicked this recent trend of kickstarters/indiegogos was the fundraiser for the Angry Video Game Nerd movie, which started October 2011 with an intial goal of $75000 but reached over $300000 by the end of the fundraiser on Feb 3rd 2012. He has a massive fanbase who were more probably ignorant of indiegogo until James Rolfe started his campaign. I think this might've contributed to crowdfunding popularity quite a bit.

Are you looking or items like Karyn Bosnak's infamous cyberbegging site SaveKaryn.com from 2002? If not, cyberbegging probably ought to have an entry anyway.

You mean that woman from Feminist Frequency? She always get's attacked, mostly by men. But on topic, I think Kickstarter could use an entry.