While most of the tech industry was trying to fathom why Facebook (s fb) would pay $2 billion for virtual-reality headset maker Oculus VR after the acquisition was announced, many of the 10,000 would-be users who backed the company on Kickstarter were busy slamming the company for selling out — despite the fact that Oculus had already sold out by raising venture capital, as founder Palmer Luckey noted in a comment to the Wall Street Journal.

More than anything, what this furor highlighted is the emotional connection that many backers seem to feel when they fund a Kickstarter project: something that has very little to do with any legal rights they may have to the thing they back, but a connection that is still extremely powerful. In some ways, it may be the most powerful feature that Kickstarter or any other crowdfunding platform has.

As more than one observer