San Francisco band "The Khans" made the offending video.

Kickstarter acts as a giant, low-risk dragon's den: a virtual boardroom where anyone can honk their ideas into the dark and see if they come back with money on them. Unlike the Den, however, there are no bollockings from Bannatyne, no garbled flipchart nighmares, and no brutal profitability criteria to satisfy - just the potential investor's sense of whimsy.

Some ideas turn out to be masterpieces that would otherwise have evaporated in a risk-averse economy. Others are creative endeavours that entice swarms of impulsive backers into territory no sane public or private body would consider.

Needless to say, these success stories are the tip of a decidedly iffy iceberg. Every plucky win wafts the smell of freshly baked money further into the internet, prompting a gold rush of would-be superstars, frustrated writers and post-pub entrepreneurs to try their luck. 

To rifle through this bag of offal with me, I invite you to switch on something I call "Failure Vision": activate the site’s "ending soon" filter, and cast your eye down the page looking for the most desperately stunted green progress bars. What emerges is a torrent of hopeless daydreams; mangled barks for charity growing faint and hoarse as they drift off the site with just a few dollars to their name.

Some, such as this man’s dream to publish a quarterly magazine containing only photographs of clouds taken in Southern Idaho [2], are thoroughly charming in their overestimation of the public appetite for the mundane.

Others, such as this frankly terrifying plea to fund a book detailing one woman’s obsession with the band Green Day [3] (and, it transpires, accusing them of stealing her ideas along the way), are pitched with the sincere and unwavering belief that the world is waiting to share the author’s monomania.

Nevertheless, out of the mire of mediocrity, terrible judgement and marital aids made from human hair, some concepts rise gloriously and soar out of the failuresphere on wings of sheer Chutzpah; pitches so brazenly crap as to endear anyone with a few bucks to spare.

Meet the Khans [4], a band from San Francisco whose roaring, exclamatory passion for horde-era Mongolia was strong enough to blow away the funding target for their 7-inch vinyl without recourse to such dull tactics as comprehensible prose.

“ORDER UP A SMELLY Preview of THE KHANS Hit MONGOLIAN BEEF [5] Now!!!!” howled their pitch. “Hunt with an Eagle!!! (not included)”, it promised, “Learn how THE KHANS strategize!”

Better yet is the accompanying video, (see above) in which someone who sounds like an out-of-work trailer voiceover artist after two bottles of scotch slurs menacingly over stock photos of Mongol horsemen, ordering the viewer to donate generously so the Khans can “put their musical captured treasures on round plastic discs”.

“A little horse milk money from your yurt won’t hurt…” concludes the voice, and neatly summarises exactly why Kickstarter works so well. Who wouldn’t spare a dollar for these people?

But this look into crowdfunding represents merely a cheap plastic net dipped into the stream of America’s subconscious. The Khans, Cloud Man and even Green Day’s Biggest Fan look like reasonable people with reasonable ideas compared to some of what lurks in the site’s depths.  

Next week, we’ll be going deeper. Bring your wallet.

Each week Fred Crawley will blunder through the underbelly of Kickstarter.com in search of the world’s most tragic, spectacular and incomprehensible online pleas for money.