I think this is what most people are really afraid of. They want kickstarter to be this small, odd thing that few people know about but they think is cool. By opening kickstarter to the mainstream, their cool, hip "mission district" is being gentrified.

In case that transition caught anyone off-guard, this same pattern is seen over and over in otherwise unconnected things. Punk was cool, before it went mainstream. SoMa was cool, before it was swallowed by condos. Facebook was cool, before my mom started using it. etc.

I think it'd be interesting if Kickstarter projects were required to (or maybe strongly encouraged to) donate a percentage of their earnings to another project(s) on the site. Making these percentages visible to users would be interesting as well; smaller projects might get some extra visibility from larger projects like Mr. Braff's.