The demand for fun always exceeds supply. It’s just a fact of nature, and lately there have been some cool projects that use this to their advantage. The formula is pretty simple: use silliness to build attention, use that attention to get more attention until you’ve got a mini-phenomenon, and then let others participate in that phenomenon in exchange for valuable assets.

People have used this for all different kinds of projects both frivolous and not. For example:

This guy traded one red paperclip for a whole house.

You probably remember the Million Dollar Homepage.

A stunningly quick success for a fan: Help Me Get Random With Lady Sovereign.

And then of course there’s Your Name on Toast.

And here’s a brand new one, with rather humble goals: If I Blog It, They Will Come.

Pretty amazing, huh? Know any other projects that use silliness this well?