Newsletter: What Is Kickstarter, Anyway?

Back to basics

Kickstarter For Afua

It’s just occurred to me that I’ve never explained what Kickstarter actually is! Since some of you may never have heard of it before, I’ll give a brief summary.

Rich people fund their own projects. Less-rich people seek backing from rich investors. But nowadays there are other options, known collectively as “crowdfunding”. Crowdfunding means that instead of seeking out one rich investor to put a lot of money into something, we can instead seek small bits of funding from lots of people, which adds up to the same total. Kickstarter is one platform for that.

In essence, a creator (such as me) posts a project and how much funding they seek, along with what rewards backers will receive (usually the finished product, or a luxury version). Backers with an account – which is free to create! – can choose to pledge money to support the project. If it reaches its funding goal then the amount they pledge is collected, Kickstarter takes their cut, and the rest goes to the creator. In turn, the creator then sends out any rewards people have chosen. If the funding goal isn’t reached in time, no money is collected from anyone, or passed on to the creator.

You can explore all the current projects on their site. There’s technology, art, music, clothing, and other creative categories. I’ve backed many projects in the past, as it can be a great way to buy interesting items that may not be available in the shops, and to directly support small producers. So, for example, I bought my girlfriend some ethical handmade shoes and sneakers in the past. I’ve also supported authors, and food producers, and indie film makers. There’s a lot on the site, and you can browse for projects just in your country if you prefer.

So feel free to have a look. And if you’d like to support the Afua novella Chris and myself have written, you’ll find it here:

The rewards include ebooks, printed books, and luxury editions (that won’t be available in the shops). We are now only £5 short of our goal. :-)

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A Bit About Me

Time for a small revelation, and something I only started to become aware of in the last year, but which has changed my understanding of my past, and made many things a lot clearer!

I almost certainly fall somewhere on the autistic spectrum. During my life I’ve gradually come to realise that my continuous inner dialogues, hyper sensitivity, recurring depression, light-related moods, swings between exuberance and being withdrawn, thought mechanism combining fundamental logic with extreme empathetic faith, conceptual obsessions, and repetitive thought patterns (amongst other things!) aren’t the same as the subjective experience of many other people. It’s why I can talk for hours on a topic that interests me, but have trouble with small talk and formal conversation.

It’s like when I was a kid and was short-sighted: I didn’t know. I assumed the world was blurry for everyone, and it was standard to look at the blackboard up close after a class to see what the teacher had written on it. Then one day I had an eye test, was pronounced myopic, given a pair of black NHS spectacles, and realised the world looked totally different. For the first time I understood how people knew which shop to go in: they weren’t relying on vague colours, sounds and memory, but could read the writing above every shop! It was a paradigm-shifting “A-ha!” moment.

Likewise when I read about the thought processes of neurodivergent people and realised they matched mine, and they were different from how most people experienced things. A-ha! It explained so much. And, just as I don’t see my depression as being an illness that needs fixing, but a natural response of a compassionate mind to all the injustice and cruelty we see in the world, so the realisation of my particular mental makeup just showed how different we all are.

My friends and loved ones had long suspected that I was “somewhere on the spectrum” as they told me. They put up with me anyway because they also know that compassion, questioning everything, and an obsession with improving things aren’t bad traits.

I’ll continue to examine this revelation as a way of better understanding how my mind works. “Know thyself,” as it said above the Delphic Oracle.

It probably explains why I can get obsessed with detail, as in the post I wrote yesterday about Copyright Licensing. And why I want to finish up my series of Parliamentary Candidate pledges, even though I wasn’t elected: I want to leave it tidy and complete! So I wrote about my thoughts on Travel, Refugees, Education, and Small Businesses, Assisted Dying, Controversials. I have trouble leaving anything unfinished.

Bright blessings,

Karl