Wow! You won’t believe this crowdfunding campaign

…and that’s OK. You probably shouldn’t.

This seems like a good follow-up to my post yesterday about how most crowdfunding campaigns fail, and why crowdfunding media solicitations shouldn’t present the product as if it already exists.

Meet LeviDock: The Onion of crowdfunding campaigns. It is presented as serious, but it has got to be satire, or a prank, or something along those lines. Let’s just take a quick look at a few clues that this can’t possibly be for real.

1. In all of the pictures and videos it displays some version of an iPhone gliding effortlessly in the levitating wireless charging dock. The problem is that none of the iPhones are actually plugged in to the charging port, and the iPhone is not capable of just absorbing energy from the airwaves.

2. It is a dumb premise. Yes, dealing with all of the charging / syncing cables and the docking of various gadgets can be a pain. Setting one of those gadgets on a levitating dock doesn’t do anything for all of the gadgets that aren’t on the levitating dock, and still need to be plugged in using old-fashioned wires. Also, the wireless charging levitating docking station doesn’t actually solve the problem any better than every other docking apparatus already in existence.

3. The funding goal of the crowdfunding campaign is only $1,000. That amount probably won’t even cover what it cost them to create the mock-up of the docking station, or produce the video showing off the satirical, fake levitating wireless charging dock in the first place.

Part of me wishes this were real, but I’m not even really sure why beyond the novelty of it. Like I said, it is a gadget that doesn’t solve any problem, and does so in a stupid way. If I’m wrong, I may just buy one of these anyway if it ever comes to market. It would be a cool thing to have on my desk, and a reminder perhaps to not be so cynical of crowdfunding projects.

But, I’m not wrong. There is no way this exists. There is certainly no way the project gets off the ground for a mere $1,000. Even as a prank, they should have set the funding goal at $50,000, or at least $10,000 just to make it even remotely plausible.

Maybe I’ll contribute $25, though. The t-shirt might be cool.

 

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