In case you missed it (although the tech press have had little else to report on today, it seems), some guy launched a kickstarter project with the ambitious goal of raising $10 to make a potato salad. (Link)
The project description:
“I’m making potato salad. Basically I’m just making potato salad. I haven’t decided what kind yet.”
On one hand, it’s absurd. It’s something like the tech equivalent of lighting your cigar with a burning $100 bill. It’s opulent, conspicuous consumption. Frivolous and wasteful
, it seems to embody at least partly the recent backlash against the Silicon Valley tech industry, and the accusations that money is being invested generally into products and services aimed at making life cushy for the privileged and entitled elite, while more fundamental problems concerning the welfare of everyone are ignored.
On the other hand, why not? If people want to shell out their own hard-earned cash for something so frivolous, and have a bit of fun with it, why not let them? Although gratuitously wasteful, it’s not really doing any harm to the world as we know it. And maybe it might make a couple of people chuckle when they receive their $3 portion of potato salad.