Yes, the potato salad Kickstarter is an incredibly stupid joke that the Internet has deemed worthy of over $40,000.

But it’s a joke that targets the shallowness of social media panhandling in a fun way. That’s why it’s worth celebrating.

Zack Danger Brown’s Kickstarter began by asking only for $10 to make a potato salad. He promised to say the name of any backer who contributed at least $1. It’s the exact kind of weird thing the Internet loves and the project caught people’s attention. Blogs reblogged, people shared, it went viral. The guy ended up surpassing his goal by a wide margin, and now the plans have expanded to include custom hats, a giant pizza party, and probably a concert or something.

Of course, as with anything popular on the Internet, the backlash was inevitable. As the story has grown, commenters became less charmed by the project and more offended that people would throw money around so callously, as though the money contributed to the project was somehow siphoning it away from dollars that would have otherwise ended up in an orphan’s pocket.

Read the rest of Grant Pardee’s story here.