Robot Royalty
Published in Collective Hub issue 49, October 2017.
Building MACHINES that fail might sound like a terrible way to make a living, but it’s WORKING OUT just fine for SIMONE GIERTZ, AKA Queen of the Sh*tty Robots.
“This is, like, the weirdest thing I’ve done. Today.” Simone Giertz is attempting to put jeans and a basketball jersey on a mannequin so white and glossy it outshines the toilet bowl it’s on top of. Unfortunately, the mannequin’s legs won’t stay in place as Simone struggles with the clothing. Hilarity predictably ensues.
The mannequin is to be the guinea pig in a demonstration of Simone’s latest invention – a butt-wiping machine. The butt-wiping machine is a thing of pure terror – a cordless drill modified to accommodate a roll of toilet paper, attached to the inside of the toilet seat lid. Mannequin-wrangling complete, Simone steps aside and hits the big red button that starts the machine.
The drill swings haphazardly towards the mannequin’s exposed cheeks and spins the toilet paper into a frothy, bouffant mess. After several attempts with similar results, the drill eventually whizzes so powerfully that the toilet rides out backwards from under the mannequin, which crashes to the floor.
The machine is a resounding success – as a sh*tty robot, that is.
Welcome to ‘Sh*tty Robot Nation,’ where Simone reigns over this YouTube empire as the ‘Queen of the Sh*tty Robots’. Her subjects are her supporters following via online platform Patreon.
Simone’s first video, in 2015, was only seven seconds long and featured a helmet with a robot arm that very poorly brushed her teeth. Since then she has created a robot that fails to make you breakfast, another that smears lipstick all over your face, and one that does a really bad job of chopping vegetables (along with a terrifying giant version with two-and-a-half-metre knives). There’s also the drone-powered machine that cuts your hair, a robot that puts your sunglasses on for you, and another that helps you argue on the internet by repeatedly smashing a foam head into the keyboard.
It’s safe to say these robots are not out to steal our jobs.
“There’s definitely a thought [in my work] of how much do we want to automate, and what parts of our lives do we not want to automate,” says Simone, Skyping from San Francisco while fiddling with a nail-polishing robot she’s about to film. “But if a robot could get me out of bed in the morning, and wash me and make me look decent, I’d have no problem with that. There are so many parts of my life I’m totally okay with outsourcing to technology.”
Originally from Stockholm, Simone first studied physics at college before dropping out to enrol at digital innovation school Hyper Island. This, she says, was the first step towards prioritising her passions over practicalities. “Going to Hyper Island was one of the first fun things I let myself do,” she says. “I was always very duty driven and pushing myself really hard. I realised that this didn’t really make sense, because I’m a lot better at things that I enjoy than at things I find excruciatingly painful.”
After picking up some basic coding skills at Hyper Island, Simone turned her attention to Arduino electronics kits and joined the growing maker movement. Fast forward to today, and her videos and GIFs are all over social media, her YouTube channel has more than half a million subscribers, and her videos have had around 25 million views. Her fans subscribe via Patreon, which brings in more than US$7000 a month, meaning she doesn’t need to jump at every commercial offer.
“There are a lot of brands who want to work with me and they’re just waving money in front of you and you’re like, ‘No, this actually doesn’t feel good or right.’ That’s something I’m trying to get away from, which starting a Patreon was a huge part of – not having to depend on branding.
“There’s something really sad about being a creator on the internet and the business behind it is just increasing your value as a billboard for brands and I think that as much as it’s a really good income – I mean I’m still going to do brand deals – it’s nice to have the opportunity to not have to say yes to all the opportunities that come in and actually make sure that the ones you do decide to work with actually reflect your values.”
She refuses to give up the on-camera swearing that has cost her a few sponsors (although she does make kid-friendly content for another YouTube channel, GoldieBlox), and is uncompromising on making sure that her business endeavours align with her values. Forget Queen of the Sh*tty Robots – Simone Giertz might just be the Patron Saint of Doing Exactly What You Want.
Her Stockholm residence is a houseboat (you can see a tour on YouTube, as well as a video of Simone cleaning the septic tank), but she currently resides in a studio in San Francisco. She also has vague notions about kitting out a submarine to live in.
“Rent is crazy in San Fransisco and there’s very limited space,” she says. “Under sea level there’s so much space. And it feels really comic-book-villain, which is all I’m ever going to aspire to be.” (Has she heard of anyone actually living in a submarine as a private citizen? “I don’t think so. There are probably good reasons not to!”)
In 2016, Simone presented a talk at the XOXO Festival on the importance of building useless things, and how doing so helped her build a community and a career. Her dedication to finding the comedy in technology has led to rare opportunities, such as working with Adam Savage from MythBusters on his web series Tested, and even launching into space. Well, almost.
Earlier this year, Simone partnered with Google’s making and science team to create her own space training program. First up she visited a carnival ride storage warehouse to practise not puking on the Orbitron flight simulator. Then she spent 48 hours locked in her bathroom to simulate isolation in a confined space, subsisting on freezedried food (“Who needs coffee when you can eat tampons with a strawberry flavour?”) and sleeping next to her toilet.
But after all this low-fi DIY training, the grand finale of the three-part series was serious business – entering zero gravity, spending seven-and-a-half minutes (in 30-second chunks) floating, weightless, in a padded aeroplane cabin.
So the obvious question is: what did that feel like? “It felt so weird. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” she says. “Do you know Burning Man? When people go and they’re just the biggest snobs about it? I feel like that about zero gravity.
“There’s something so endearing about humankind constantly wanting to fly. Like we feel inferior to birds. We have these really big brains and we have opposable thumbs, but we can’t freaking fly? Poor, inferior humans.” Speaking of inferior, as Simone gets better at what she does, what will happen to the sh*tty robots? Will they get better at their jobs?
“Building sh*tty robots takes a surprising amount of skill,” says Simone. “I plan for the sh*ttiness. I know exactly how I want it to go wrong and what I want it to do, and building for that is actually pretty tricky. As I get better it will probably make them sh*ttier. I hope me getting better is going to make it worse.”
Long may she reign.
