Basically I'm just making potato salad. I haven't decided what kind yet. 
 
 UPDATE: BEHIND THE SCENES 
 
 UPDATE: THE HOMAGE SHIRT 
 
 UPDATE: THANKS INTERNET! 
 
 UPDATE: WE DID IT 
 
 Stretch Goals: 
 
 $35 - I will make 4x as much Potato Salad. I know $40 isn't 4x $10, but you guys have earned it. 
 
 $75 - Pizza Party! 
 
 $100 - I will try two different Potato Salad recipes. 
 
 UPDATE #2: ALL THE POTATO THAT'S FIT TO PRINT 
 
 We made the news. Let's keep up the good work! New stretch goals coming soon! 
 
 http://www.cnet.com/news/guys-kickstarter-dream-making-potato-salad-possibly-with-dill/ 
 
 UPDATE #3: WOW YOU GUYS 
 
 We're making a lot of great progress. I think it's time for us to think about getting hats made. I added a new donor level for people who want hats. For those who are interested the hats could look like this: http://www.zazzle.com/i_love_potato_salad_mesh_hat-148005376484063142 
 
 Stretch goals: 
 
 $250 - Better mayonnaise (from the natural foods section) 
 
 $300 - Call a chef to get a better recipe 
 
 $350 - Make way more potato salad and probably do a third recipe. 
 
 WE MADE THE NEWS! 
 
 http://www.abc6onyourside.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/mans-potato-salad-plea-takes-off-kickstarter-33010.shtml 
 
 NEW STRETCH GOALS: 
 
 $1000: I'll do a live stream of the potato salad making 
 
 $1200: I'll pay someone to film a thank-you video for all of my backers! 
 
 A BIG STRETCH GOAL: 
 
 We're really tearing through these stretch goals. I honestly don't know what is realistic anymore. So, I thought maybe we try to double the current number? 
 
 $3000: My kitchen is too small! I will rent out a party hall and invite the whole internet to the potato salad party (only $10 and above will be allowed in the kitchen)! The internet loves potato salad! Let's show them that potato salad loves the internet!! 

 As of writing, a Kickstarter campaign for “just making potato salad” has raised $37,115. Every few seconds that number climbs higher, and each uptick is greeted with cheers. It’s a self-perpetuating humor machine, and it is horribly efficient. There is no joke, at least not anymore; whatever joke there was has become an adaptive, joke-like arrangement of circumstances. It is a perfect device, compatible with all known theories of humor and therefore with none of them. 
 
 — The Superiority Theory, which suggests that all humor derives from a feeling of “sudden glory,” explains potato salad: Its participants have money so disposable that they can spend it on nothing. But the Inferiority Theory of humor, which holds that much humor derives from modesty, works too: It is both an assertion of cruel dominion over the world and an act of self-deprecation to donate ten dollars to a Kickstarter to make potato salad. 
 
 — The Relief Theory of humor, which claims that laughter comes from the “release of excessive energy,” explains the potato salad as well. The campaign is a release of seriousness, a release of techno-utopianism, a release of capital. It is a multi-purpose blowoff valve, BUT WHERE DOES ALL THE ENERGY GO NEXT? 
 
 — The Incongruity Theory suggests that humor stems from absurdity or inconsistency, or, in a more specific formulation, the “mechanical encrusted upon the living.” Kickstarter is, in its own formulation, “a new way to fund creative projects.” Potato salad is not a typical “project,” nor is it particularly “creative.” But the campaign itself — the use of Kickstarter — was initially creative, before the parody was so effortlessly assimilated. An inversion, an incongruity, another explanation. And yet still: despair. 
 
 Potato salad satisfies these and all other doomed attempts to systematize humor, which might be the only way to understand it: It is humor-shaped and perfectly optimized. If it was ever whimsical it isn’t anymore — there is too much money, too much potential, tied up with this salad. But this foundation of whimsy has created circumstances in which more capital is equated with more humor, which is too horrible an idea to even joke about: It is a transcendence that is out of our control, a villain, an invader, an awakening of The Old Ones, a Dire Event, or at least a Portent. What’s funnier than $37,115 for potato salad? $47,115 for potato salad, ha ha. What’s funnier than $47,115? $100,000. With every new dollar it feels more urgent to a viewer that he attach his name and his dollars to the thing, which is now obscured entirely by noise — a fee for ensuring that you’re in on the joke. 
 
 It’s an investment compulsion, and the investment is a scam. (It’s fun to imagine all business opportunities as jokes: They are temporary and dependent entirely on context; they are taken advantage of at the expense of someone or something that is often neither aware nor present; they are — necessarily? — cruel; they inspire the same embarrassing urge for inclusion, and the same shameful regret upon misapprehension or exclusion. Jokes! Look around you: Isn’t it nice, that it’s all just jokes?). If the campaign keeps going, some people may start to claim that, at some specific level of investment, the joke is no longer funny. It will be too much — the money could be better used on another campaign, or in another context entirely. This will be true but it will have always been true. None of these people will be able to explain to you what exactly changed. 
 
 This is when it will begin to feel obvious, after Kickstarter takes its five percent, after Amazon banks its cut, when all at once the internet feels an opposite, equally irresistible urge to pretend that none of this ever happened, that we realize what the joke really was, and at whose expense it was told. 

 Late last week, amidst an agonizingly slow pre-holiday news cycle, CNET introduced the world to Zack Danger Brown, a Columbus, Ohio native who wanted to crowdfund the making of his very first potato salad on Kickstarter. He wanted $10. He got over $15,000 (and counting). And here, because this is the world we have created, is your Kickstarter potato salad guy think piece. The thought: Kickstarter potato salad guy rules. 
 
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 The joys of Danger's (can we just call him Danger? let's just call him Danger) potato salad Kickstarter are many. It's funny, for one, in a sustained and understated way that's surprisingly hard to find on the internet at large, much less on a crowdfunding platform. Each update—there have been 11 so far, as Danger bursts through target after absurd target—hits the same faux-sincere notes. The stretch goals are as creative as their amounts are outlandish, the FAQ and their answers are all perfectly in character. 
 
 Stretch goals: $250 - Better mayonnaise (from the natural foods section) $300 - Call a chef to get a better recipe $350 - Make way more potato salad and probably do a third recipe. 
 
 There's a reason Kickstarter potato salad guy has 120,000 shares (and counting!) on Facebook, and that 2,100 people have handed him actual money. It's not just because of holiday weekend filler coverage like ours and others. He is funny! He is charming! He promised a pizza party! I mean how can you not just fall in love a little: 
 
 But funny and charming and pizza are not what make Danger a hero. What makes him a hero is that he's found a way to skewer Kickstarter in a way that's entertaining, lucrative, and (potentially, depending on how much dill he uses) delicious. 
 
 What you might not realize is that Kickstarter potato salad guy wouldn't have been possible just two months ago. There were rules back then! Barely enforced, not extraordinarily helpful rules, but rules just the same. Projects were at least nominally vetted before, to keep out the obvious scams and duds. Well, most of them anyway. Last month, though, Kickstarter transitioned from nanny state to bachelor uncle weekend visit. Any project can stand, as long as it's not illegal, regulated, or dangerous. And potato salad guy is the perfect distillation of that sure, whatever ethos. 
 
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 I mean, just look at his Risks and Challenges disclosures: 
 
 See? Funny! Also a nice little needle in Kickstarter's eye. 
 
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 Good things have come out of Kickstarter. But, especially with these new rules in place, they're far outnumbered by terrible no good impossible projects, pipe dreams wrapped in windmills, renders not worth the pixels they're produced with. Potato salad guy, though? Openly satirical. You give money to Danger because you're in on the joke, not being made into one. At this point it's safest to think of Kickstarter as performance art. And potato salad right now is the best show in town. 
 
 Here's what we can take away from this textbook virality, before we collectively forget it ever happened (next Tuesday-ish?): Assume everything on Kickstarter is potato salad in life-size hologram clothing. Give money to people whose ideas could maybe make the world a better place, but don't clear out any space for them on your mantel. And when in doubt, always trust a man named Danger.
– By now you have probably heard about Zack Danger Brown's ludicrously successful potato salad Kickstarter. It's at more than $40,000 as of this writing, and headed higher all the time. And as far as John Herrman at the Awl is concerned, it's not just out of control, it's a "science fiction villain … an invader, an awakening of The Old Ones, a Dire Event, or at least a Portent." Yes, it was once funny, but the whimsy is gone; it's just an engine. Because what's funnier than a $40,000 potato salad? A $50,000 one. "With every new dollar, it feels more urgent to a viewer that he attach his name and his dollars to the thing … a fee for ensuring you're in on the joke. It's an investment compulsion, and the investment is a scam." It will be only after the dust settles and the checks clear "that we realize what the joke really was, and at whose expense it was told." (On the other hand, Brian Barrett at Gizmodo thinks Brown is a hero because he's "found a way to skewer Kickstarter in a way that's entertaining, lucrative, and (potentially, depending on how much dill he uses) delicious." Kickstarter recently stopped vetting projects, making this insanity possible. The takeaway? "Assume everything on Kickstarter is a potato salad.")