[meiji]

I'm not sure why this is any sort of surprise. Ever since Kickstarter began there have been lots of great ideas, lots of awful ideas. Some of the great ideas have been clearly way too ambitious for small teams but people happily donate money. Given this isn't an investment and what you're doing is giving someone money to follow their dream, to my mind it's almost irrelevant if at the end you don't get your $30 lightbulb. You've lived vicariously through the Lifehacker in question and got to see something go to market or crash and burn.