text: Kanye West, prolific entertainer/fashion icon/celebrity/member of the Kardashian family needs our help! 
   
   
   
   Recently, Kanye let us in on his personal struggle. He is 53 million dollars in debt and it doesn't look like he's going to get Mark Zuckerberg's help that he desperately needs. We must open our hearts and wallets for Kanye today. Sure he is personally rich and can buy furs and houses for his family, but without our help, the true genius of Kanye West can't be realized. 
   
   
   
   As Kanye West has told us time and time again he is the "greatest living artist and greatest artist of all time". Great artists need to be supported financially to achieve their full potential. 
   
   
   
   To quote Mr. West, "I am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney. Nike. Google. Now who's gonna be the Medici family and stand up and let me create more!" 
   
   
   
   WE MUST BE THE MEDICI FAMILY TO KANYE. 
   
   
   
   GoFundMe, let us unite! 
   
   Help spread the word! Share Tweet 300k shares on Facebook shares on Facebook ||||| Add a location to your Tweets 
   
   When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| While Kanye West may be the most beloved artist of all time, at least by Kanye West himself, he's still human. And humans have bills to pay. 
   
   Recently, Yeezy tweeted that he's $53 million in debt. 
   
   I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt... Please pray we overcome... This is my true heart... — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 14, 2016 
   
   While it's unclear whether Kanye is truly in this enormous amount of debt, fans are banding together to help him in his time of so-called need. 
   
   Funnyman and funny fan Jeremy Piatt, created a GoFundMe page for the artist, which he's aptly titled "Get Kanye Out of Debt". 
   
   "I'm trying to help out the greatest living artist of our time while he's in need," Piatt told Mashable in an email. "I saw that Kanye is 53 Million Dollars in debt and I knew I had to do anything I could to help, because as all my friends would tell you, I'm just a very giving person." 
   
   Piatt is modeling his act of good will and support of the arts after the wealthy Italian Medici family, who were known to financially support artists at the time of their reign. 
   
   "Kanye is the greatest living artist on the planet, he's told us many many many many times," Piatt told Mashable. "The great artists need people to finance them, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo had the Medici family to fund their projects, so why not have the legions of Kanye fans fund his? This is what makes crowd sourcing great! Now we can personally make a difference in the world and help pay for mind blowing art." 
   
   Image: PHOTOLURE News Agency/Demotix/Corbis 
   
   While Kanye has yet to reach out to Piatt about obtaining the $35 that has been raised when we published this story, Piatt is hopeful he'll hear from the rapper. 
   
   "I am trying to reach out to Kanye or his people so the funds can be transferred to him," Piatt says. "I have been in contact with GoFundMe and we've agreed to keep the page up, but I am not able to withdraw any money. The only people who will be able to withdraw money will be Kanye or his team." 
   
   my dreams brought me into debt and I’m close to seeing the light of day… — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 16, 2016 
   
   Here's hoping Piatt's mission to help the artist get out of debt makes its way toward Kanye himself. 
   
   
   
   Ultimately, according to Piatt: "The goal for the page is to raise awareness for supporting the arts, of course I hope that Kanye finds out about it because the money can not be transferred to him unless that happens." ||||| There appears to be some truth to Kanye West’s claim that he has met “all the tech guys”. The Chicago hip-hop mogul this weekend declared he is $53m in debt and requested funding from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google cofounder Larry Page. 
   
   He then threw down this 70-character gauntlet: 
   
   KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) All you guys had meetings with me and no one lifted a finger to help…. 
   
   The Guardian wasn’t able to determine the true nature of West’s finances, but he does appear to have more than a few friends in Silicon Valley, based on public press accounts and interviews with several tech executives. 
   
   He frequently shows up at Apple’s southern California office, is friends with rap-obsessed venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, has reportedly dined with an Instagram founder, and has some sort of social relationship with Dropbox chief executive Drew Houston. 
   
   
   
   The interactions go back at least half a decade. 
   
   Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Kanye stopped by the SpaceX rocket factory today. pic.twitter.com/6z7gHBn6 
   
   There’s some context here. The entertainment industry and tech have long had a fascination with each other. For music titans such as West, Nas, MC Hammer and Justin Bieber, it’s become a way to grow serious businessperson bona fides. For technologists, it’s the ultimate revenge of the nerds. 
   
   Some of West’s early interactions with Silicon Valley were well-documented by Gawker’s tech industry gossip site Valleywag. In 2012 and 2013, the producer and rapper began pitching his latest vision, Donda, to investors. It was presented as a sort of hip man’s General Electric that would have its fingers in everything from fashion and publishing to “alternative energy sources” and “hovercrafts”. 
   
   KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) Here is my Donda chart that I wrote 4 years ago that everyone laughed at… pic.twitter.com/g1po6Z3H55 
   
   Perhaps trying to grease the levers of finance, West invited several tech thought leaders to his 2013 engagement party at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, home of the Giants. Horowitz, the cofounder of mega venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, was there, as was Dropbox’s Houston. 
   
   Another person present: Mahbod Moghadam, the controversial cofounder of Rap Genius, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed company that helps people understand rap lyrics. 
   
   
   
   “They’re tight. It’s cute,” Moghadam, who now works at Everipedia, said of Horowitz and West. 
   
   Moghadam left Rap Genius in 2014 after comments he made about a mass shooting at the University of California Santa Barbara. “In their defense, I did do a lot of stupid things,” he said. 
   
   Dropbox and Andreessen Horowitz didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 
   
   It couldn’t be learned what relationship, if any, West maintains with executives at some of the biggest Silicon Valley companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, Uber and Alphabet (the artists formerly known as Google), although he has dined with Kevin Systrom, the cofounder of Facebook-owned Instagram. 
   
   But he does appear to have a working relationship with Apple, a less-than-surprising development given the iPhone maker’s work with streaming music these days – even if he did declare his new album The Life of Pablo would “never never never” be on Apple’s iTunes Store and would be exclusive to the streaming service Tidal. 
   
   At Apple’s southern California headquarters, where former record executive Jimmy Iovine helps run Apple music, West is sometimes found hanging out in Iovine’s office, a person familiar with the meetings said. 
   
   In his Twitter posts on 14 February, West asked Zuckerberg for $1bn to help handle his debts and bring Donda, his startup idea, to fruition. 
   
   As Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, noted on Twitter, that’s a lot of money these days, even in Silicon Valley. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. 
   
   Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. 
   
   internet The Dumbest GoFundMe Campaigns Ever Ashley Reign 115k votes 18k voters 9.8M views 25 items Follow Embed List Rules Vote up the GoFundMe and crowdfunding campaigns that are so stupid, they're almost insulting. 
   
   If you've ever been on social media, read the Internet, or had human friends, you probably already know about crowdfunding campaigns like the ones on GoFundMe or Kickstarter. More than likely, you’ve been sent a request or two to help fund worthy causes like paying vet bill of a sickly cat or covering the medical expenses of someone’s grandma. But not everyone in the crowdfunding universe has intentions that are quite so pure. In fact, we’ve gathered a collection of some of the worst GoFundMe campaigns of all time to prove just how weird and greedy society can be. 
   
   
   
   These are some of the worst crowdfunding campaigns the Internet has to offer, featuring everything from stupid GoFundMe campaigns like the one to find out the truth about #deflategate, to a Kickstarter fan project to break up Ciara and Russell Wilson. While some of these dumb things on GoFundMe might actually resonate with some people (like the one to help a lady buy a hedgehog), others are just plain wacky. 
   
   
   
   At the very least, these crowdfunding attempts will help you feel better about your own life. Vote up the best of the worst dumb GoFundMe campaigns ever to hit the web! 
   
   
   
   1 1,493 1,137 The Fund To Send A Woman Around The World For Spiritual Healing 
   
   Photo: GoFundMe Traveling the world sounds like an amazing opportunity. And the chance to travel the world on someone else's dime? Even better. This woman - only identified as Rebecca G. - is asking people to help her pay for a $10,000 round-the-world trip so she can advance in her "spiritual journey." Sure. She promises that as she travels she will help others realize their own spiritual journey all while living out her dream. How she plans to help others is unclear. What we do know is that she plans to write a book about it. Yay? The 20 Most Epic Wedding FAILs of All Time The Scariest Animals in the World 
   
   2 2,290 8,645 A Fund to Erase This Bad Decision 
   
   Photo: Tabitha Renea West/via GoFundMe Turns out getting a job was tough for this tattooed New Yorker. To help erase her (really, really, really) terrible decision and hopefully brighten up her job prospects, she started a 
   
   Turns out getting a job was tough for this tattooed New Yorker. To help erase her (really, really, really) terrible decision and hopefully brighten up her job prospects, she started a GoFundMe campaign to get the 420 tattoo removed from her forehead. Aiming for $800, she raised more than $1,000 in just a few days. ||||| Add a location to your Tweets 
   
   When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| Enlarge Image GoFundMe 
   
   Don't worry Yeezy, help is on the way. 
   
   A Kanye West fan in Minnesota has created a GoFundMe page for the rapper, fashion designer and Kim Kardashian's crazier half, a day after the Grammy winner tweeted he was $53 million in debt. West's financial woes are so bad, he publicly begged two tech billionaires for cash. 
   
   "Kanye West, prolific entertainer/fashion icon/celebrity/member of the Kardashian family needs our help!" Jeremy Piatt wrote on his Help Get Kanye Out of Debt page. "Sure, he is personally rich and can buy furs and houses for his family, but without our help, the true genius of Kanye West can't be realized." 
   
   The Internet's quickly showed its generosity and support. By Tuesday afternoon -- some 48 hours after West's desperate plea -- a total of $50 had been pledged to the multi-platinum hip-hop star. (That's 0.000094 percent of Kanye's total debt.) 
   
   Piatt, a graphic designer, is no stranger to Internet fame. The 36-year-old, who made headlines last year for giving NFL helmets a bold makeover, said he was motivated by the desire to help a fellow artist. 
   
   "The arts must be funded, and without funding great ideas and great masterpieces never get made," Piatt said. "This is a great way for people, not giant corporations, to support great artists and visionaries." 
   
   A West representative didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. 
   
   Of course, Piatt wasn't alone in trying to organize support for Kanye. A separate GoFundMe campaign, called HELP PAY KANYE'S DEBT!, was organized by Robert Kulik in Washington, D.C. though it appears to have been canceled. 
   
   "A buck, five-spot, 10-banger, deuce-nil, Franklin... Just give what you can as soon as you can," the campaign read. "We need to relieve his stress, so the "greatest artist of all time" can do what he does best - making the world a better place!" 
   
   Kulik's campaign raised $0. He didn't respond to an email seeking comment. 
   
   West recently went on a bizarre Twitter rant in which he pleaded for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet CEO Larry Page to each invest $1 billion in his ideas. West tweeted Sunday that he feels rich people are always "too cool" to ask for help, including lending money. 
   
   Some in Silicon Valley took note. Box CEO Aaron Levie tweeted: Classic Series A pitch deck line. 
   
   Yeezy -- that's one of West's nicknames -- also just released his latest album, "The Life of Pablo," and debuted his latest clothing collection at Fashion Week in New York. 
   
   The album, which was released on the struggling music streaming app Tidal Sunday, was pulled down shortly after it appeared. The album has reportedly been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times from other sites after many fans said they paid $20 to download the album off Tidal but didn't get it. 
   
   On one of the tracks, West boasts he's responsible for pop star Taylor Swift's fame. 
   
   On Monday, Swift artfully responded while accepting a Grammy for best album. 
   
   "To all the young women out there: there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or fame," she said. "But if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going, you'll look around and know it was you and the people who love you who put there and that will be the greatest feeling in the world." 
   
   I guess that's what they call a "mic drop."
target: – Kanye West is, apparently, $53 million in debt, but he should be able to pay that off in no time thanks to a GoFundMe campaign started by 36-year-old Minnesotan Jeremy Piatt, CNET reports. "Recently, Kanye let us in on his personal struggle. He is 53 million dollars in debt and it doesn't look like he's going to get Mark Zuckerberg's help that he desperately needs," Piatt writes. "We must open our hearts and wallets for Kanye today. Sure he is personally rich and can buy furs and houses for his family, but without our help, the true genius of Kanye West can't be realized." So far, after just a single day of fundraising, $603 has been raised for Kanye (along with a lot of comments like, "How about you get a job?"). Piatt tells Mashable that he's spoken to GoFundMe, and only Kanye or his team will be able to access any money raised. As for Zuckerberg—West specifically asked him, as well as Larry Page, to donate money to the Kanye cause when he went on his Twitter rant, and then went on to imply that he knows other tech giants who should help him. "All you dudes in San Fran play rap music in your homes but never help the real artists…," he tweeted, followed by, "All you guys had meetings with me and no one lifted a finger to help…." The Guardian did a little investigation into how many "tech guys" Kanye actually knows, and found that he really does have something of an ongoing relationship with Facebook and Apple; has had meetings with investors in Silicon Valley and even had some of them at one of his parties; has had interactions with an Instagram co-founder, the Dropbox chief executive, a co-founder of Rap Genius, and Elon Musk; and is good friends with venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. (Here are some of the dumbest GoFundMe campaigns ever.)