Isn’t it nice to know there are some constants in life? Things you can rely on?

I’ve largely avoided Kickstarter for several years. It’s not well designed for browsing, it’s not like I really need someplace else to spend money*, and, to be brutally honest, the parade of people who seem to think “I want it” is sufficient reason to say “Give me money” can be depressing.

* And the “pay now, get your product when its ready” paradigm doesn’t work well for those of us who want instant gratification.

But I’ve been inside almost 24/7 for more than three weeks, and one can only watch so much TV and read so many books*. So why not take a look and see if Kickstarter is still a home to useless products, clueless creators, and shameless scamsters?

* Heresy, I know. But even with my e-ink reader, after six or seven hours, my eyes do start to itch.

As you might have guessed from the title of the post, the answer is yes.

I’m not sure which category “Petstagram” falls into, and apparently neither was anyone else.

The creators were asking for $9,100 to launch “social media for your pets”. Because, of course, one can’t post photos of one’s pets on any of the existing social media networks.

This project is clear proof that “Some people will buy anything”. As of Tuesday afternoon, their pledge total stood at one dollar. Did they overestimate demand or just do a really piss-poor job of promoting the product? We may never know.

Which is probably just as well, because it appears they believe that building front end apps for Android and iOS comes before creating backend infrastructure. That’s not just putting the cart before the horse, that’s crossbreeding zebras and giraffes and planning to buy the cart once your genetics project creates a horse.

Then there’s SocialShredder. I’m fairly sure this one falls into the scam category.

The goal of the project is software to allow people to remove their potentially embarrassing or unwanted social media posts. This can be done, the project creator assures us, for a mere $100,000.

To my surprise, as I write this, he’s only managed to attract two backers, who are putting up a grand total of $6. He’s got time, though: the kickstarter will run through the end of May.

The project page is remarkably silent on just how this project will work. Does he have agreements with Facebook to allow more thorough deletions than can be done on the site itself? What about Twitter, which doesn’t offer any way to track and delete retweets? Then there are all of those annoying independent bloggers, who have a nasty habit of taking screenshots and posting them; has he found a way to hunt them down and force them to delete anything someone doesn’t like?

I’m especially amused–and depressed–by the “Risks and challenges” section of the page, which essentially says “Hey, we’re going to be everywhere, forever.” Uh…is that a risk or a challenge?

Finally (for today, anyway), The Harmony Bible folks believe they’ve figured out why so few people have read “the most significant book ever published.” The answer: it’s not arranged in chronological order.

They have, they say, rearranged the entire bible chronologically so it “reads just like a book, from beginning to end”.

Have they ever read a book? I’m assuming they’re talking about novels, because most non-fiction is arranged by subject just like the bible. Or maybe not, because I’ve read a heck of a lot of novels that start with something exciting, and then go back to show the origins of that thrilling bit.

The other problem with the regular bible is, of course, that it’s full of redundancies, with the same story being told several times by different people. Nobody wants to read the same story over and over again, right? So the Harmony Bible eliminates all those redundant retellings; somewhere Akira Kurosawa is crying.

It’s not even clear from the kickstarter what the money being raised will go to. The Harmony Bible is already available in two different ebook versions (only $9.99 each). Is this to produce a print version? If so, that $87,700 goal seems awfully high: there are any number of reputable Print On Demand publishers who would do it for substantially less. Even flat-out vanity presses don’t generally charge that much.

Still, this attempt to get funding is doing better the first try, earlier this year. That brought in $180 in pledges before the kickstarter was canceled; this time it’s up to $1,000 with more than a month to go.

And remember: your pledge of two dollars or more will get you the chance “the read the bible like a book very easy to read, understand and gain know, full copy of what you want 1 Pdf file Sent to you”.

Hopefully the actual Harmony Bible is a little easier to read than the kickstarter.