Did anybody else back this when the kickstarter was happening?

Remember in the early 90s when you'd go to the local computer swap and sniff cards to see if they were fried or not? When you got a bad one, this is that exact smell.

I received mine today and I have to say, if you love the smell of solder / welding, raspberry, cheap alcohol, and suffering -- this is the scent for you!

This is easily the worst smelling fragrance I have ever experienced. So bad, in fact, that if there is ever an opportunity to go to space, I will respectfully decline.

This was the first campaign I backed. It took roughly eight months for everything to come together... and it really has me questioning this model. So my question is, what have you backed and what was your experience?

What things -- big or small, successful or not-- have you put your money towards in hopes of bringing them to light? Tell us the story of why you chose to support them and whether or not you feel your contribution was worth it to you in the end.

It's been asked a couple of times before, but not particularly recently (last was in August I think!). So who or what do you support on Patreon, and why?

I currently pay for two podcasts: Let's Know Things, and The Film Reroll.
Let's Know Things is a podcast made by Colin Wright, who if you've seen the Minimalists documentary on Netflix you may be familiar with. It's a great weekly podcast that picks apart a recent article, adds a load of context to the subject, and extrapolates from it somewhat. It's always insightful, and I've learned a load that I never thought I would from it.
The Film Reroll is probably my favourite podcast right now. The basic premise is that a group of people take the plot of a movie, and turn it into an RPG (using GURPS). So instead of normal improv where they can just do something, they have to roll dice to see if they actually succeed at doing it. It invariably ends up going completely off the rails, and is always hilarious. Highlights include the Speed episode where they catch the mastermind before he has a chance to plant the bomb on the bus, and Jumanji, where the dice rolls for the board game go so well that they beat it before things have a chance to go dreadfully wrong.

It's not through Patreon, but I also make a monthly contribution towards this website called wikipedia. It's pretty wild: an online encyclopaedia where anyone can view, submit, or edit the information, for free. It's got a page on just about anything you can think of, and whilst it's not perfect, it can be a fantastic jumping off point for learning about a subject, and going deeper via the sources. I believe it to be one of the pinnacles of online achievements, and I use it easily twice a week directly (and more indirectly, every time I get instant answers from Google).

So what do you support via Patreon (or other means)?

EDIT: A followup question. Does the amount that a creator on Patreon is already receiving have any bearing on your decision to contribute?

In keeping with Tildes' general philosophy of supporting budding technologies that have the potential to reform large domains of the internet for the better, I think you should look into Flattr (www.flattr.com).
A Flattr subscriber reserves any set amount of money per month which will then get automatically distributed to content creators on the web, in proportion to an algorithmic estimate of how much the user has used that particular site or resource.

First-tier support for Tildes on Flattr would be as simple as registering an account and connecting the tildes.net domain to it. From then on, a percentage of the reserved amount would automatically get transferred to Tildes' account for every Flattr user who uses the site (I myself have generated 64 "Flattrs" on this site as of this moment, which would lead to a significant portion of my reserved $5 to be transfered to Tildes for this month).

For sites that host content creators, like Twitch and YouTube, Flattr offers a deeper support, where Flattrs go toward individual content creators as well as the host site in itself. An intuitive way to connect Tildes to this feature would be to have each upvote of a Tildes post generate a Flattr for the poster. I believe the money would then be divided between the user who was upvoted (if they have a Flattr account) and Tildes' own Flattr account, but I am unsure about the exact fraction that would get routed to the individual poster as opposed to Tildes itself. I'm sure Flattr's tech support can answer this in detail, though. Flattr is currently owned and maintained by the company behind AdBlock.

What do other users think? Is Flattr's model good? Are there other sites or providers that offer a similar service? A notable difference between for example Patreon and Flattr is that Flattr is indirectly based on a "pay what you want" model, which marks a pretty significant shift in economic control from producers to consumers. This will obviously have both advantages and drawbacks. Personally, I think the model has a lot of potential on an arena like the internet, where the sheer number of potential consumers can make microtransaction-based models like Flattr really powerful.

According to Graphtreon, there are some crazy popular Patreon campaigns. The top creator has over 37,000 patrons and the runner-up creator has over 23,000 patrons. They're making over $100k per month from crowdfunding alone. Insane!

So I'm curious: Do you guys support any Patreons yourself? Which ones and why?