People are shocked because the only reason kickstarter is a big deal is that most of the audience has absolutely no familiarity with VCs and startup failures. They are normal people who see "$75 - receive Thing" and absurdly, strangely, interpret that as "I give you $75 you give me Thing". If Kickstarter wasn't a store then they wouldn't allow projects to list prices next to the products they are selling, all reward levels would be "stickers!" and not the successful project. And I bet all the self-righteous jerks who say "I don't even expect to get anything when I back a project!" would instantly stop backing projects, once they actually couldn't expect to get anything for being a backer.
Only when they also say anything similar to "I don't even understand why people are surprised when projects fail!", as all of them have in my experience. I guess even then they could just be stunningly oblivious, fair enough.
"all of them have" ... "in my experience". I posit that you don't have experience with everyone who's lost money on kickstarter and uttered that particular phrase. And not knowing the sample size of your experience, I don't really trust your opinion on people, except that some are oblivious and some are jerks. Some are. People's oblivion does not stun me anymore. I don't expect drivers to stay on the road. People do things that are terrible for their health, and can generally be counted on to make objectively bad decisions, especially my mother. But the thing is, if you get all the human souls in a room, and get them to guess how much a mountain weighs, the mean average is consistently closer than any individual guess. So I guess some people's idiocy is a counterbalance to the wise people. I hope I've filled your heart with hope just a little bit.
