Since March of 2010, I have been one of the world's leading fake scientists. If you don't
believe me, I have a microscope set right here, don't you see?
I've made 1000s of science lessons, met hundreds of 1000s of fans, wrote a fake textbook, built
a machine gun Einstein. Let's see him again. And I've even been debunked by Snopes. And
now, after all that after 11 years, it's time to stop. This is what I learned along the
way.
Doing some prep work tomorrow, I'm going to go around the city to different Little Free
Libraries, and donate copies of this 2012 textbook that I wrote about Fake Science.
But first, I want to add some inscriptions that would be really awkward to see in a book
that somebody gave away. Let's get started.
Dear James, This gift is a symbol of my undying love.
Always, Veronique
I
started being a Fake Scientist with a Tumblr post on March 8 2010, about how to remember
the planets. How it began, I don't really know.
There was a trend for fake things, like Fake Steve Jobs was a big thing at the time. And
so I thought that Fake Science could be a good addition to that trend.
The big breakthrough I was searching for, it was that, it was a book deal. I went through
Flickr groups of vintage illustrations from science textbooks, and just from the 1950s
and 60s, and I started Photoshopping these weird science lessons that didn't actually
make any sense. It did not take long.
Fake Science was primarily a Tumblr. Tumblr was a really popular blogging service at the
time. There were so many Tumblr book deals, I cannot explain how many people were getting
book deals from Tumblr. So I did Facebook and Twitter too, but Tumblr was the big thing
because the big thing on Tumblr was a book deal. And that was like my dream at the time.
So I did it. And you know, the humor, sometimes it was a little basic, but it worked. It went
really viral. Really quickly.
Fake Science was everywhere. News going hugely viral. And by May of that year, I was getting
requests from agents and publishers to do a book. And that was the big dream, a book
deal. This was what I wanted. This one’s a little ambulance.
This was it. This was what I wanted. The dream was coming true. I was finally getting the
book deal. All of this stuff was actually working. That was the dream.
This is your brain. This is your book deal. This is drugs. This is reality.
Any questions? I really did get a book deal. And this really
is an M&M, vanilla cookie sandwich. It just had some stuff happen to it. Like life. There
are book deals that look like this. But there are also book deals that look like this. So
I'm not lying when I say I got a book deal. I did.
I earned a grand total of $7,000 for what was going to be about two years of work. And
four months of intense work, actually making the book all by myself. I had to fight for
the budget to actually buy photos to put in the book. Cool, right? They slapped on a terrible,
terrible cover, even though the only reason I had this book deal in the first place was
because I was good at making images that went viral.
Which sounds a lot like a book cover. But they didn't care. My book deal was melted,
and it was burnt, and it tasted nothing like what I thought it would.
I went into the Barnes and Noble and I did see my books on the table there. But instead
of feeling proud and elated, and like some super Distinguished Professor Dude, I felt
nothing.
The thing that I had been working for so hard that I had started this entire project for
in the beginning, turned out to taste kind of bad. But then a funny thing happened. Instead
of stopping, I kept going for nine more years.
And that was actually the good part.
2020 this year is gonna be as funny as this book. Woo.
Being free of the book deal, of success, it gave me a chance to experiment to find out
what my voice was to actually be funnier. And listen, I still had delusions of grandeur.
I thought that this could be something bigger. I made more money doing Facebook posts than
I ever did on the book deal. I thought I could build something someday. But I experienced
what so many different media companies do.
I chased audiences, platforms rose and fell. I had followers on Facebook and Tumblr, was
slow to Instagram, I tried Substack — across all of those I had about a million followers,
but it just all kind of dissolved into nothing.
But what I could do was experiment wildly. I got better after the peak of my book deal.
It got weirder. And stranger. I did a lot of different stuff. I made a video about a
love affair with a salmon. And I'll never forget what she said to me the last time I
saw her.
I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure book with the cover that I actually wanted to have.
I made T-shirts like this one and sold hundreds of them to people that have never met.
And I made a PSA about cranberry bog dolphins that got so big that Snopes decided they wanted
to debunk it to get the traffic off of my idea.
That's science, right? It's about the discovery along the way. That is what makes it interesting.
And I got way weirder, not because of some book deal, but because I kept going. I learned
to find my voice. I mean this thing right here, it got 57,000 notes. This is the weirdest
science fair project ever. Being a fake scientist wasn't about the breakthrough
that was ultimately disappointing. The real science was the friends we made along the
way. That's the stuff that I'll carry with me. The audience I found, the voice I found.
Hopefully I can use that. Even when it's not Fake Science. Danica. Marco. Love, Natalie
Imbruglia. That’s some of my best work yet.
It is super late. I'm super sweaty. That's it. Hopefully some of you have joined me from
Fake Science. If you have, this is the channel where I post history and personal videos,
stuff like that. I'd love it if you joined me by subscribing. And I'd also love it if
you liked or commented on this video. Just to let me know you're there, that there's
a voice on the other end.
One of the great things about Fake Science I couldn't fit into this video was the fact
that I got to meet some really funny, awesome creative people. And I hope to do that here
too. Alright, that's it. Thank you. Gonna go towell off now.