Interesting. I've recently begun considering Patreon and Kickstarter as possible ways to reboot my career direction. It bothered me at first, because it seemed so much like all the non-profit appeals for money.


" Aglialoro says he's proud of the hundreds of $1 contributions he received from people who he says told him: "I want to take some value of mine and place it where I see value.""

There was an episode of a show called "Brain Games" on tv the other night, which tries to demonstrate how easily your mind mis-perceives things.

The put a booth in the middle of a busy public way. The booth was labeled "Free Money'. There was a clear plastic container with perhaps a hundred 1-dollar bills in it. Behind the counter, a man stood, trying to encourage people to come take the free money, no strings attached.

Most people wouldn't. Most feared some kind of "gotcha". One guy actually tried to put money IN it.

So, they left the booth empty, and watched on hidden camera. Most people still wouldn't take the money. But more did.

Then they placed a large picture of a pair of eyes in the booth. Nobody took the money, again.

My own reaction to seeing it confused me at first. I didn't want to take the money; I realized I was actually put off by the "free" part of it.

The sad part is that their conclusion was that people wouldn't take the money, fearing it was a trap, rather than that people didn't want to take the unearned. I wonder how many of the people who passed it by really, at least subconsciously, didn't want to help themselves to the unearned...