"I dunno, no one made them set out the promises they chose to make, that was their own decision."

Some people have a lot of problems dealing with peer pressure, and are willing to make promises because they think that's what people expect of them, not necessarily because they're convinced they can actually deliver.

Sure, they could have chosen not to make those promises, but you have to put it into context.

I am not sure about that. I think, at least, in this tech community that people forgot about Kickstarter and are focusing on Diaspora now. (Granted, I did not donate any money so I am not fiscally tied to Diaspora.)

I think Kickstarter is an awesome website and I really hope they don't get any ill will towards them due to the possible failure of Diaspora.

Agreed. Because the next people who have to make this decision will be able to look at Diaspora as a model of what could happen next.

EDIT: removed the mini-rant since it clearly was not understood.

My own take: wake me when they've shipped real, working software I can actually use to replace Facebook while controlling my own data's access rights and durability. Until then, this is still pretty much another case of a few guys making a piece of software somewhere, that may or may not ship, that may or may not succeed, and they started only a month ago. Yawn.

Can't a guy engage in some simple hyperbole without it turning into the Four Yorkshiremen sketch? ;)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2255807183978932387#

But I'll say three serious things:

1) Yes, of course nearly everybody in the world is worse off than these guys.

2) No, such facts do nothing to cheer anybody up, however factual they may be:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/richard-cory/

3) Empathy is not a zero-sum game, in which giving it to one person implies that you must withhold it from another. Rather, empathy is like a muscle: If you work it, it gets stronger. The opposite is also true: If one makes a habit of sneering at the pain of the rich, one may soon find oneself sneering at the pain of the poor as well. Practice makes perfect.

I'm going to assume that by 'White People' you mean 'upper middle class'. This is based on my notion that Caucasians can suffer from cancer, starve to death, or live in Detroit with 2 crack addicts for parents.

Presumably it's a reference to this site:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

And, yes, that is what it means. I guess http://stufftheuppermiddleclasslikes.com didn't test as well.

Okay... how does it reference that? I thought that site was about sandwiches or something. I'll take this as an example of mixing up race and economic class, I guess.