Kickstarter spam bots: a confusing yet hilarious problem?

Warning: extremely pathetic examples inside!

Sorry, it brightens your face? What?

Hello, long time comic Kickstarterer(er) Dave Cook here, and a super backer with exactly 222 comics backed since launching my first campaign back in 2014 (I love how conveniently harmonised that number is!)

My latest comic campaign just went live on Friday: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bust/killtopia-nano-jams-a-cyberpunk-comic-anthology

Since then I’ve been screen grabbing every spam and bot post I’ve received since then - partly for my own amusement and also to share them with you in this unplanned and hastily written blog post.

So here’s a thing you might not know about Kickstarter if you’re not actively running campaigns yourself - creators on the platform get pummelled with an almost comical volume of bot spam from the moment we hit ‘publish’ on our campaigns - and not just over the Kickstarter platform itself.

These spam messages are almost exclusively from bots or shady companies that promise to secure you even more backers and campaign visibility for a price, and are most definitely written by AI in the majority.

This annoys a lot of people but I’ve learned to just laugh at their futile and grasping attempts to sucker coin out of people in the most non-effective ways possible.

Take this very real and very serious chap for example:

Who is this tastemaker? Are they here with us in the room right now? What sort of tastes do they make? Who’s your cousin?

Look, I know this came from a bot but come on, who would possibly fall for this? Why even bother with the grift if you’re going to low-effort it this poorly?

What’s next? Ah, yes:

Where do I even start with this one. I got it literally hours after my campaign went live and somehow it’s also ‘approaching its final countdown.’

I liked the little use of the word ‘cus’ instead of because to make the message seem more human. It’s genuinely adorable.

And we’ve levelled up from tastemakers and we’re now onto advocates, I see. Well hot damn, how could I lose?

This next one got a big laugh out of me:

This image should be placed next to the dictionary definition of Artificial Intelligence. I don’t really understand what it means or what they want me to do? When the next stage of your con is impossible to discern, you really have failed as a con artist.

Absolutely wild, honestly…

Well mate, I turned 40 last year, I don’t sleep right, and I’m in constant pain most days so your message most certainly doesn’t find me in good condition, no, but thanks for your concern.

If I hear of any ‘strategic and donations winning marketing strategies’ I’ll be sure to let you know first, mate yeah? 👍

You see the point though, right? Who would even fall for these obvious scams? The weird thing is, before AI came along and fucked things for everyone, these grifts were are least semi coherent and actually more dangerous - seemingly plausible offers from seemingly helpful companies who just wanted a small fee to try and help you achieve success…

And by that I mean, they’d simply share your campaign link in crowdfunding Facebook groups that seem impressive, but are actually populated by fake accounts.

So yeah, final point: don’t engage with anyone who promises to make your campaign a success in this way. It’s likely a scam.

Okay bye! 👋

www.dave-cook.com