Susan Wilson, a successful entrepreneur, said she was shocked and aghast by the outpouring of negativity she and her daughter experienced because of the campaign.
"We asked for $829. We received over $20,000," said Wilson. "People asked what we were going to do with the extra and were outraged when I said I didn't know. It was not okay to say 'I don't know.'"
Wilson's critics accused her of fraud, even going so far as to suggest her daughter Kenzie -- seated beside her at the panel -- did not actually exist. She admitted that she had no idea at the time the sort of charged atmosphere she had been heading into -- one in which, as Romero reminded the audience, Anita Sarkeesian had also just raised a substantial amount over her funding target, to skepticism and outrage from a vocal minority of detractors.
"Anyone with a dollar has an opinion," said Romero.
"People get very emotional about [crowdfunding]," Temkin offered. Because Kickstarter and similar services offer a tremendous amount of empowerment to both project creators and prospective backers, he said, it becomes a hot issue even for the uninvolved.
"That's just a result of the technology being new and [the fact that] we don't yet have the language to talk about it," Temkin concluded.