How amazing is this apartment I just moved into? I'll show you a bit.
It's owned by this 80 year old artist and it's just filled with his art.
There's this huge garage door that opens up into a garden
And there's a workshop where I can build all of my robots.
There's even this giant killer bunny.
I'm pretty sure its going to eat me in my sleep.
And my family.
And then it might come and track you down too, internet friend.
Watch out.
Cue the sentimental music, Simone who's editing this.
yeah that works I realized last week that it was a year ago since I published
my first shitty robot and i just wanted to share a little bit
what this experience has been like for me and yeah this is a very sincere video
0 drugs so bear with me
let's go back a year to 2015. I was living in San Francisco and I was fucking
miserable i had this job that on paper was great but i was bored out of my mind
and I just remember being like yeah maybe this is what life is like maybe my
expectations were just too high but at the same time I was like no I don't want
this to be what life is like I try to trace back when was the last time I was
really excited about something and there were two things that got me excited
one was building things for myself so I was building things for work but I
realized that wasn't the same thing as when it was something that I felt
ownership for and the second one was making videos. And I had had this dream for a
long time that I wanted to make a kids show about electronics and I was like
yeah maybe I should start taking that idea seriously
so I hunted down this producer on a swedish TV channel and I was like hey I
I really want to make a kids show about electronics but they were super slow at
replying so I was like okay I'll just film this pilot episode so like a test
episode and that was when I built the toothbrush helmet
So i sent it to them and they didn't reply so I
waited and then I waited a little bit longer and they still didn't reply
and I was like hey at least I gave it a shot
Gosh it's all picked apart right now it looks really miserable this
toothbrush has been in so many people's mouths
I never tell them i still had this toothbrush helmet and I was like what am I supposed
to do with it? Am I supposed to just throw it away? but instead I filmed the
seven-second clip of it working
and I posted it on YouTube and I put a GIF of it on reddit and I didn't think much
of it but then I checked in a couple of hours later and it had gotten like half
a million views and I was like super cocky and prouder of myself and this
ridiculous project and I remember just being like ok this is it. This is life
peaking
there are so many times during this year that I thought that like okay this
is life peaking and then it's just kept going. Motherboard asked me if i wanted
to build another project and write an article for them about it and that was
when I made the breakfast machine
it's actually kind of funny story because i filmed the video of the
breakfast machine and I wrote the article and once again they were super
slow at replying and I was like really anxious i just wanted to get it out
there so I even sent the editor a potato
there is this great online service it's called potato parcel and you can send
people potatoes
so basically they write a message and the address and a post stamp and they get
a potato
they posted it and it got like 5 million views within the first day and I was
like okay this is the peak
this is it. At this point i decided to quit my job in San Francisco and not
because of all the shitty robots but just because I felt that it didn't get
me excited
so my game plan was to cut down on all external costs so i moved back to Sweden
I lived off of half a gigabyte of data a month. It just didn't add up for me because
I cherish my time more than the salary and i would much rather live off of less
money than having to spend a lot of time on something that I didn't like I was
planning on just doing some freelance work and give some workshops but at the
same time have a lot of hours every week that i could spend on things that I was
enthusiastic about and that was where the wake up machine was boring
that was the project where people started being like Oh arn't you that girl
who builds shitty robots and also when I realized that like okay maybe this can
be more than just a hobby for me
maybe I could turn this into a job so I just kept on building all these projects
i made the chopping machine, the lipstick robot, the applause machine, the argue on the
internet robot. A lot of things started happening at this point i was
giving around eight interviews a week i was at all these different TV shows and
people started recognizing me in the streets and I was starting to feel really
miserable
yeah this winter I was not feeling
very great and I think that there were a lot of reasons for it one being that
this whole internet person thing feeds off of my worst character traits I mean
narcissism lack of humility etc and it's something I still think a lot about.
Is this turning me into a better or worse person?
fortunately my mom has worked in this industry for a long time
I mean she has been a TV host for almost 20 years and I've been so lucky to just
be able to fall back on her experience it's kind of a funny story but I
remember asking mom about it was like how do you deal with people wanting to
take photos with you and people giving you a lot of praise or guys who would
never otherwise hit on you suddenly being super keen and she said the
funniest thing she was like Simone in situations like that
I just picture myself having the world's biggest boobs
and I was like What? And she was like yeah being a public person is as vain as having
huge tits and it makes some people want to take photos with you and make some
people want to sleep with you but it doesn't actually say anything about who
you are
I love my mom. The second reason I was feeling miserable was just because the
workload was so high and it got to this point when like every time I opened my
inbox I would start crying and in january i got a panic attack
looking back at it it's such a ridiculous thing because it was like
the most normal situation I was just sitting and having food alone at the
boat
and I was looking at my phone and all these notifications are rolling in and
I just started like breathing really heavily and I mean it's it's it's a
super scary thing when it happens
I've gotten two of them before in my life but looking back at it it's just such a
ridiculous thing
that i got like a panic attack from notifications. I've turned off all
notifications for my phone since then.
The day after I had had the panic attack I just went through my inbox and I looked if
there was anyone who could actually help me out and I found this random email
from this guy named Luke who lived in Australia and who was a music manager and on
paper it just seems like a horrible idea because if you get a manager as an
artist or as a talent you basically marry them for work, but I was in such
a tight spot
I was like okay I just need help today and I read my diary from that period the
other day and it's like Dear future Simone I just signed with Luke Gurgis if
you hate me for making this decision
I'm really sorry. But, like I can't believe how lucky i got because Luke is this
amazing person and ever since we started working together
I can feel my well-being having just like (sound of one of the cars from the Jetsons cartoon) and to be honest i don't think i've
ever been as happy as I am now
Ahh this is such a rant, but I mean just like having this as a job
and being able to work with the people i work with and getting to do so many fun
things
it's just such a privilege and I never thought that it could be this great as i
said in the last video you you are definitely the enablers of my life and
all of the fun things that I've gotten to do are all because of you and I yeah I am
forever grateful for all of you making this happen for me
Yeah, life is good
Okay, I feel that I've taken myself way too seriously in this video. It's making me
uncomfortable
did I tell you that I tried to refer to Tested's audience as testes and that my
producer had to explain to me why we couldn't do that
ok, that feels better