If you haven't heard of 'the queen of shitty robots' by now, let me introduce her to you.
Simone Giertz is a 25 year-old Swede who lives on a houseboat and who creates mostly absurd, unuseful robots and inventions. Before you have a chance to form a judgment about her craptastic robots, let me start with one of her quotes:
"To me, ideas are like annoying salespeople that only go away once I’ve built them." -Simone Giertz, The Guardian
Image Source: Simone Giertz YouTube channel
When I first learned about Simone Giertz, I was initially a bit critical because I couldn't understand why anyone would want to spend huge amounts of time building robots that barely functioned, or in some cases didn't function at all. This judgment came before I watched her videos, mind you. I think we've all grown up to think that if we're going to build something, we'd better make sure the design and engineering of it are solid. The only ones who generally don't think along these lines are children, artists, inventors and insane people. Children are free to experiment in any way they want, but why aren't adults allowed that same freedom in society?
Now there's another category of people that the internet has allowed to flourish: adults who refuse to grow up into boring, responsible adults.
Image Source: Simone Giertz's YouTube channel
Let's take a look at some of Simone's most watched YouTube videos and robot inventions:
This video shows Simone's robot alarm system that utilizes a rubber arm slapping her in the face to wake up:
This one features a lipstick robot:
And to get an overview of all her most popular robots, watch her on the Stephen Colbert show:
Many people I'm sure will have negative opinions about Simone and what she has decided to do in life. But is Simone concerned with what anyone else thinks? Obviously not. She's creating her own course for life without fear of others making fun of her along the way. There is no other queen of shitty robots, she is it. And she is having the time of her life, whether you like it or not.
When you take the time to fully grasp why Simone is making shitty robots, you begin to understand that she has a highly developed sense of humor and an idea-driven personality. She makes her ideas come to life and she's not obsessed with perfecting those ideas. In fact, the failure aspect might be baked into the inventions in order to make her videos more hysterical. It certainly would be boring to watch her channel if all her inventions worked flawlessly. Simone exists in the public realm that few adults would ever want to be caught in: failed inventions.
But when you allow yourself to fail, you become free.
When Simone was asked in an interview what she does for a full-time job, here is her answer:
"My job is without a doubt my best invention so far. I just realized that all the regular jobs I’ve had have killed my motivation. I always thought that if I just pushed myself harder and put more of myself into it it’d become more fun, but I just couldn’t get the same spark as when I worked on my own projects. So I changed my strategy and instead of trying to push myself into a mold that didn’t really fit, I thought I’d just try to change the mold. I quit my job in San Francisco, moved back to Stockholm, lived on 0.5 GB of data a month and just tried to free up as much time as possible to work on stuff I thought was fun. It was never my plan that things would take off the way they have, I just wanted to work on stuff I was enthusiastic about, and apparently other people were enthusiastic about them too!" -Simone Giertz, The Guardian
And as a bonus, whenever you receive dick pics you don't want, Simone advises to send back this video of her vegetable-cutting machine to your unwanted suitor(s):
What you can learn from the queen of shitty robots is this: find out what makes you excited about being alive and go do that thing. More, now than ever, you can build your own future from your ideas, even if your ideas are not of a genius quality. Being authentic is the key to building your own future.
