The Brilliance of The Oatmeal and Tesla

A couple of months ago, I came across a comic on the site The Oatmeal entitled “Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived.” I actually encourage you to go read it right now because it’s a brilliant comic (beware though, there is a decent amount of cursing), but in short, it douchebaggerizes Edison to no end and turns Tesla, or “Nikola Goddamn Tesla” as the author likes to call him, into this god that was under-worshipped while he was alive.

At the time, I thought this was a brilliant comic and told all my friends about it. And I started reading The Oatmeal more. (maybe some of you saw this GIF during the SOPA/PIPA protests) A lot more. The comics are hilarious and witty, yet also really relateable and true. Ok, I still think he curses a little too much, and he exaggerates at times, but he makes his point really well.

Well, guess what? Matthew Inman, founder of The Oatmeal, is doing even more to help Nikola Goddamn Tesla. As stated on his blog, Tesla’s old laboratory is up for sale in New York, and Mr. Inman wants to buy the land and turn the land into an official Tesla museum, which currently doesn’t exist. However, the land alone costs $1.6 million, and he obviously doesn’t have that much money, so he started a fundraiser. The city offered a matching grant of up to $850,000, so if he can raise that much money, then there will be at least $1.7 million to buy the land and start construction of the museum.

You might be thinking, “How in the world is he going to raise all that money?” Well, he’s already more than halfway there. In a day. And there’s still 44 more to go. He’s going to make it.

This isn’t the first time that The Oatmeal started a fundraiser. A few months ago, a company called FunnyJunk sued him for $20,000. All the details are here, but the point is, Matthew Inman didn’t want to pay the company money when he technically could sue FunnyJunk as well. Instead, he started a fundraiser for $20,000 and planned donate half of the money to the American Cancer Society and the other half to the National Wildlife Federation. He ended up raising $211, 223.04, ten times his original goal. That’s how influential he is. 

Back to the point. LET’S BUILD THIS MUSEUM!!!