Once upon a time, way back in the day, two of my best friends and I wrote a movie. It was funny (SORTA THO), but it was terrible (FULLY). We weren't just bad at writing movies—we were so bad we didn't even know what it meant to be bad at writing movies. We were a wounded bull SPURTING THICK, HOT, CRIMSON JETS OF ENTHUSIASM ALL OVER THE MATADOR THAT WAS OUR HUBRIS.
You know, we were so dumb we didn't even know we were dumb, plus we had heard about the movie Clerks. With this script in hand, and some dude named Seth set to direct the project, we went to my father to gather funding. My father looked me right in the eyes and told me to go fuck myself with as much love as can be communicated with that sentiment. Guess what though, person reading this while your friend uses the bathroom at Boke Bowl or whatever—we made the movie anyway, even without funding. We found the money ourselves. And guess what else? The movie was terrible.
It would have been less embarrassing to follow my dad's advice to the word, and actually figure out how to fuck myself. We spent our own money, it wasn't a lot of money, and we certainly didn't make it back. I learned a lot making the movie, including, like, hey... maybe I shouldn't be asking people for money to make a movie when I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You're goshdamn right this is going to be about Kickstarter.
I know crowdfunding isn't all bad. I think it's mostly good. Some of this shit though, you people have to fucking stop.
MOVING: You want to move to LA/NY/Sioux Falls to be an actor/comedian/rollerblader? Great! But look, if you don't have a little bit of money put away to make that move yourself, think about this: Maybe you aren't good enough at the thing you want to be doing to start shaking people down for money to do it. Those jobs tend to have a way of telling you that you're doing well enough to move.
VACATIONS: Are you fucking serious? Sometimes this one will hide itself in the form of "Hey! Help me get to a comedy festival, or Burning Man, or the murky old bog I was born in..." but it's a fucking vacation all the same. No. Stop asking people to help you go on vacation. You visit the fucking Oregon coast like the rest of us until you make that northern California coast money.
BOOKS: Write your fucking book! You know, at night. You don't really need a big budget to write your book. You probably have everything you already need: a computer, your wonderful mind, and friends who tell you that you're more interesting than you actually are. I kid.
It'd be dope if there was, like, a crowdfunding site you could use where you show up and do a task and they give you money and you can use that money to fund your dream and get good enough where you don't have to keep showing up to that crowdfunding site. Oh they have that? Leave your dad alone, he has his own dreams.
