Alabama Man’s Chicken McNugget GoFundMe Campaign A Viral Success

A broke college student who wanted a chicken McNugget meal had a brilliant idea, and now not only is he 20 nuggets richer, he has some internet fame on the side. The Daily Dot reports that Jacksonville State University student Michael Panik successfully raised $10 on the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe, which helped pay for a 20-piece meal at McDonalds.

As of today, however, the amount has jumped from $10 to $15, indicating that people are still donating money to the young man even though he’s already reached his initial goal. AL.Com reports that the campaign was a sort of “tongue and cheek effort” by the college student. He even spoke to the media to explain why he crowdfunded for chicken McNuggets.

“A friend and mine were talking about all the ridiculous GoFundMe campaigns we’ve seen recently, basically people just asking for money to buy personal stuff: new equipment, software. It’s pretty rude, honestly-just begging for money for things you want or need, that ultimately aren’t super expensive, and aren’t true necessities.”

Nonetheless, he posted his campaign on GoFundMe, and was able to afford his chicken McNugget meal in as few as two donations. His clever description on the GoFundMe page may have played a role in acquiring donations, but it certainly did attract the attention of mainstream media and social media.

“For every $10 more that I raise, I’ll purchase ANOTHER 20pc meal to share with friends. If we continue, we can feed the world, and bring people together around that most American of meals: the 20pc Chicken McNugget meal. Some people call me crazy. I just call them “chicken.”

Michael Panik also has a point about some of the ridiculous things that get posted on GoFundMe. In fact, he’s not the only person to start a crowdfunding campaign surrounding the acquisition of food stuffs. Back in 2014, a man used Kickstarter to raise funds to make a batch of potato salad. This campaign ended up going viral, which resulted in him raising more than $50k. The virality of the campaign was even acknowledged on an episode of South Park. The man who raised the huge amount of money in the name of potato salad is also releasing a potato salad cookbook. All of this pretty much started as a joke, but made him more money than many people make in an entire year at their jobs. An artist also used crowdfunding to design the world’s largest jockstrap. There are at least a dozen other totally bizarre crowdfunding ideas that have been successful.

Photo: GoFundMe