Simone Giertz
Simone Giertz talking at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019
Born (1990-11-01) 1 November 1990[1]
Stockholm, Sweden
Occupation(s)Maker, YouTuber
ParentCaroline Giertz
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2013–present
Genres
Subscribers2.69 million[2]
Total views174.4 million[2]
Associated acts
100,000 subscribers
1,000,000 subscribers
Last updated: 14 July 2022
Websitesimonegiertz.com

Simone Luna Louise Söderlund Giertz (/ˈjɛtʃ/ YETSH; Swedish: [ˈjæʈːʂ]; born 1 November 1990)[1] is a Swedish inventor, maker, robotics enthusiast, TV host, and professional YouTuber.[3] She has also previously worked in mixed martial arts sports journalism and was an editor for Sweden's official website Sweden.se.[4]

Early life

Giertz named the Disney cartoon character Gyro Gearloose as one of her earliest inspirations.[5]

At the age of 16, Giertz spent a year in China as an exchange student. She stayed in Hefei, where she learned basic Mandarin. During her stay in China she also made an appearance on a Chinese sitcom called Huan Xi Long Xia Dang (Chinese: 欢喜龙虾档, the Happy Lobster Restaurant), where she played Catherine, an American girl who married a Chinese man.[6]

She studied engineering physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan), a research university in Stockholm, Sweden, but dropped out after a year.[7]

Career

She started creating self-described "shitty" inventions after studying at Hyper Island in Stockholm, where she was inspired by the local open-source hardware community.[8] Giertz's interest in electronics began in 2013; she made a toothbrush helmet for a children's show pilot episode on electronics, which was uploaded to YouTube after not being picked up, starting her YouTube career.[7]

Giertz has previously branded herself as "the queen of shitty robots" on her YouTube channel, where she employs deadpan humor to demonstrate mechanical robots of her own creation to automate everyday tasks; despite working from a purely mechanical standpoint, they often fall short of practical usefulness, for comic effect.[9] Giertz's creations have included an alarm clock that slaps the user,[10] a lipstick applier,[11] and one that shampoos the user's hair.[7] When building her robots, Giertz would often not aim to make something useful, instead coming up with excessive solutions to potentially automatable situations.[12] Giertz showcased several of these robots on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.[13]

In 2016, Giertz joined Tested.com, collaborating with Adam Savage on her first project, the Popcorn Feeding Helmet.[14] In 2017, she hosted the comedy TV show Manick with Nisse Hallberg on Swedish TV6. The basic premise of the show is that the hosts invent funny creative solutions to everyday problems. In April 2018, she created a robot to promote season 2 of HBO's Westworld.[15][16][17] Around this time Giertz had abandoned the concept of the "shitty robots", later explaining that it was no longer something she wanted to do, as she felt that the joke had played out.[18]

In 2018, Simone Giertz presented at a TED conference. Her presentation was on "Why you should make useless things". She encouraged people to ask questions through creation, illustrating her ideas by presenting her own projects and robots.[19]

In June 2019, Giertz announced that she and various other YouTube makers, including Laura Kampf, had converted a Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck.[20] The truck was built in response to both wanting an electric vehicle to avoid ever owning a gasoline-powered car and a pickup truck for practical reasons, but not being able to wait for the at-the-time only proposed Tesla pickup. The accompanying parody commercial and 31-minute video describing the build process went viral and received significant news coverage.[21] She was subsequently invited to the unveiling of the Tesla's official pickup truck, the Cybertruck.[22]

In August 2019, Giertz traveled to New Zealand to work on a mantis shrimp costume with Weta Workshop.[23]

In June 2020, Giertz voiced a cartoon robot named CGO in Adventure Time: Distant Lands.[24][25]

In May 2022 she started a product design company Yetch with an online shop.[26] Around this time, she reflected in an interview with Fast Company that, "I'm a recovering self-deprecator. It's such a defense mechanism on the internet as well—like, the way you survive being an online creator is beating everyone to the joke and to the insult. I've been really trying to practice not talking myself down and talking down my skills." This change included a shift away from intentionally "shitty robots".[27]

Personal life

Giertz lived in a houseboat in Sweden from 2012 to 2016.[28] From 2016 to 2020, Giertz lived in San Francisco.[29] She announced on her channel in 2020 that she now lives in Los Angeles with her rescue dog Scraps.[30][31]

The Giertz family surname is of Low German origin. She is the daughter of television producer Nicola Söderlund and novelist and TV host Caroline Giertz, who Giertz describes as a "ghostbuster" due to her mother's work on paranormal reality TV show Det Okända. Giertz is a descendant of Lars Magnus Ericsson, founder of Ericsson.[32]

On April 30, 2018, Giertz announced via YouTube that she had been diagnosed with a noncancerous brain tumor.[33] After surgery to remove the grade I meningioma on May 30, 2018, she has continued to post humorous and upbeat accounts of her post-surgery progress, including photos of her "potential super-villain scar"[34] and a public address video on her Patreon account.[35] On January 18, 2019, Giertz reported that her tumor had returned.[36] After a course of radiation treatments, Giertz again returned to production on May 29, 2019, describing her ordeal and presenting a project which converted her head alignment mask into a "work of art" (a lamp).[37]

References

  1. 1 2 "Simone Söderlund Giertz fyller år den 1 November". Birthday.se (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  2. 1 2 "About Simone Giertz". YouTube.
  3. ↑ "Simone Giertz - YouTube". YouTube. Archived from the original on 27 November 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  4. ↑ Khan, Asif (3 March 2016). "Simone Giertz, The Patron Saint of Bad Robots". Inquisitr.com. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  5. ↑ "How To Build The Best Bad Robots | WBEZ Chicago". 2020-08-09. Archived from the original on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2021-10-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. ↑ "THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE: When I was on a Chinese sitcom". YouTube. Retrieved Jun 24, 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 Godlewski, Nina (1 June 2016). "This self-taught engineer invents robots designed to fail hilariously at their jobs". Tech Insider. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  8. ↑ Sanusi, Victoria (May 20, 2016). "This is Simone Giertz, aka the "Queen of Shitty Robots", a 25-year-old inventor from Stockholm, Sweden". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved April 18, 2018. She said she came up with the idea of making ridiculous inventions while studying at an advertising school called Hyper Island. She came across an open-source hardware community and "immediately fell in love with it".
  9. ↑ Jamieson, Amber (17 March 2016). "Meet the queen of useless robots: 'The internet is a weird place'". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  10. ↑ Nsubuga, Jimmy (15 November 2015). "New alarm clock wakes you up with a slap in the face". Metro. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  11. ↑ Hannah Withers (7 January 2016). "This brilliant woman made a lipstick robot". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  12. ↑ Rutkin, Aviva (22 March 2016). "The many reasons why we love useless robots". New Scientist. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  13. ↑ Simone Giertz is Queen of Crappy Robots, retrieved 2019-10-02
  14. ↑ "Simone Giertz Joins "Tested," Builds Popcorn Feeding Helmet". Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers. 7 April 2016. Retrieved 2016-04-07.
  15. ↑ Bonnie Burton, This homemade Westworld robot will give you nightmares, Cnet.com, 19 April 2018
  16. ↑ "Simone Giertz crée un robot Westworld-style". Actu.digital (in French). 25 April 2018.
  17. ↑ "Esta youtuber demuestra que 'Westworld' podría ser aún peor]". Cinemania.es (in Spanish). 20 April 2018.
  18. ↑ "Why the 'Queen of Shitty Robots' Renounced Her Crown". Wired. 12 October 2019.
  19. ↑ Why you should make useless things | Simone Giertz, retrieved 2021-06-30
  20. ↑ Simone Giertz (2019-06-18), I TURNED MY TESLA INTO A PICKUP TRUCK, retrieved 2019-06-19
  21. ↑ Hawkins, Andrew J. (18 June 2019). "YouTuber Simone Giertz transformed a Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck". The Verge. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  22. ↑ Giertz, Simone. "Driving my car around is... weird || TRUCKLA UPDATE + CYBERTRUCK". YouTube. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  23. ↑ Making a mantis shrimp costume, retrieved 2019-10-02
  24. ↑ Tangalin, John (June 20, 2020). "'Adventure Time: Distant Lands' Part I Spoiler Review – "BMO"". The Cinema Spot. Archived from the original on June 27, 2020. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
  25. ↑ Trumbore, Dave (June 25, 2020). "'Adventure Time: Distant Lands – BMO' Review: Come Along on a Far-Out New Story". Collider. Collider Cryptomedia, Inc. Archived from the original on June 26, 2020. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
  26. ↑ Hicks, Jasmine (3 May 2022). "Simone Giertz's online store sells cool inventions 'you didn't know you didn't want'". The Verge. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  27. ↑ Ifeanyi, K. C. (22 June 2022). "This woman custom made a Tesla truck, and she's just getting started". Fast Company. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  28. ↑ Why I'm selling my houseboat, retrieved 2021-10-01
  29. ↑ Giertz, Simone (2016-06-11). "Can't believe I'm finally moving back to San Francisco. Good day today". Twitter. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
  30. ↑ Giertz, Simone (2020-09-23). "Getting rid of a medical doll is weird". YouTube. at 9:30. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
  31. ↑ Giertz, Simone (May 21, 2020). "I've been keeping a tiny secret. (no I'm not pregnant)" (video). youtube.com.
  32. ↑ "Simone Giertz: "The Making of Sh*tty Robots" - Talks at Google". YouTube.
  33. ↑ Giertz, Simone. "I have a brain tumor". YouTube.
  34. ↑ Bryan, Chloe (June 4, 2018). "YouTuber Simone Giertz posts photo of 'super villain scar' after brain surgery". Mashable. Retrieved July 12, 2018. In true Simone Giertz form, Simone Giertz underwent brain surgery last Wednesday, and she's already cracking jokes. The YouTuber and "Shitty Robots" creator, who announced she had a non-malignant brain tumor in April, shared her first post-op photo update on Monday, uploading a picture of her surgical scar to Twitter.
  35. ↑ Giertz, Simone (June 4, 2018). "You have one new message". Retrieved July 14, 2018.
  36. ↑ Giertz, Simone (January 18, 2019). "My brain tumor is back". YouTube. Retrieved January 18, 2019.
  37. ↑ Giertz, Simone (May 29, 2019). "My experience with radiation therapy". YouTube. Retrieved June 30, 2019.
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