More Than 4 Million People Visited the Potato Salad Kickstarter

Forget Oculus Rift and the Reading Rainbow reboot—a bowl of potato salad was better able to hold the attention of the Internet this summer.

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter today revealed a bevy of stats related to what has become one of its most famous (or infamous) projects, an initiative by a random guy to make his first-ever bowl of potato salad. The project gathered widespread media attention and ultimately attracted 4.1 million visitors to its web page, making it the fourth most-viewed Kickstarter project of all time:

Unlike many widely-viewed Kickstarter projects, almost everyone who viewed the potato salad project got a hearty laugh and then went about their business. In the end, the project earned just $55,492 from 6,911 backers. Oculus Rift, for comparison, made $2.4 million, and Reading Rainbow racked up $5.4 million, though both attracted fewer visitors than potato salad.

On the other hand, though, a guy made a cool $55,000 just by saying he wanted to make potato salad. This is the great, democratizing force of the Internet.

Unsurprisingly, most of the project backers came from the U.S., with the United Kingdom and Canada being the next-biggest potato salad backers. Among U.S. states, the most backers hailed from Ohio (potato salad connoisseur Zack Brown’s home state), California and New York.

Brown is planning to host a festival called PotatoStock2014 in Columbus, Ohio with live music and, of course, lots off helpings of the tasty side dish. Proceeds will benefit a charity aimed at ending homelessness in Ohio. A portion of his potato salad money will also be used to start a for-profit venture to “spread humor and joy around the world,” he said on his Kickstarter page.