Why the ‘Queen of Shitty Robots’ Renounced Her Crown
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This rings really true, and as funny as the shitty robots were, I really have been enjoying her later videos a lot more than those. She's really funny and talented and deserves a lot more than shitty robots. And I hope she'll be ok.
It takes an expert to get to her level, and a lot of guts.
I wish her luck and success in every way she chooses, but I find the new Giertz more bland and less fun (and I don't like the fact she has left Sweden when I moved in)
That isn't learning, it's the exact opposite. And that is why she stopped.
She shouldn't be so hard on herself. If calling the projects "shitty" gave her permission to fail, well, failing is also a part of learning.
Now she's ready to progress to "useful" robots—or other projects altogether. That makes sense.
Why? There's nothing wrong with moving onto other things and pursuing other interests, but she has this perplexing perspective (which you echoed in this statement) that somehow the 'shitty robots' content was something to look down on. It was good stuff, and if she wanted to continue, it would have been perfectly fine and something you could build a career around.
Of course she can make better actually functioning robots than I can.
However, it can at the same time be true that they represented her own fear of failure, and were holding her back from actually fulfilling her real potential.
“it was harder and harder to come up with ideas. I was always concerned that it was eventually going to be like beating a dead horse, and that the joke was going to be over and I didn't have anywhere else to go.”
The part that's perplexing is why she (and some others) see that content as somehow beneath her and why she has this general negative and insecure attitude towards the "shitty robots" content she created. That content entertained a lot of people and allowed her to stand out from the mass of other Youtube content creators.
She started the genre but it's now bigger than her, with interesting characters like Michael Reeves. Apparently he's not bogged down by the same insecurities as her, which just sucks. I'd rather have dumb but interesting robots from both of them and not just one.
But they were also a gimmick. A single joke, repeated. And sticking with the same joke would be sad. She can do other things, and she's daring to do other things now, and those other things are hilarious. They are not uninteresting in any way, they are much richer than the simple joke robots.
I don't read this being about insecurities but rather more about physical comedy not really being something that comes easily for Giertz, and the stress associated with the brain tumour forcing the early abandonment of that sort of work.
That said, I do hope she does more machine comedy. I love unusual forms of comedy.
With most media you usually see a carefully choreographed final product that appears flawless and intimdating. You don't get to see the process or what lead up to it. What her videos demonstrate is that failure and imperfection are ok and part of the process.
A good example of this is Bon Appétit Magazine, it arrives as a finished product that appears, on the surface, to be perfect and unassailable. If you watch their videos on Youtube you get a much different perspective and get to see all the flaws and mistakes in the process that leads up to the magazine. Giertz brings that to engineering and that's what's so powerful about her work.
I agree that there are a lot of people, not just women, who are afraid to step up and be an expert. I believe that fear is what drives people to become experts, while simultaneously holding them back. Her growth and self actualization are both powerful and inspiring, and at the same time sad because it means she probably can't create more of those early videos that were very special. Even still her growth and continued aspirations will produce ever more inspiration for others.
To say nothing of the fact that Truckla is just fucking awesome.
A lot of people weren't in on it though. They thought he was washed up, not knowing that that was the joke.
Another good comparison would be heels in professional wrestling. Those people work hard to get as low as they are, and they suffer for it as much as the medium benefits from it.
I agree completely, and it changed my life to realize this as an adult. I try to teach my kids that it's OK to enter practice mode when they do things that are hard (video games, drawing, homework) and that it's OK to fail as long as they learn or at least have fun.
For me it was the video games Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne that taught me to fail and press on. I had a fixed mindset before, and would mostly do things that came easy to me. In DS3 the bosses, and even regular enemies, can kill you with a couple of blows, but if you figure out their movesets you can easily counter them.
The first time you meet a new boss you have to be prepared to die a couple of times (or 10 or 50) as you learn their attacks and how they're telegraphed, before you can defeat them. A common suggestion is to not at first even try to attack a difficult boss, but to just dodge and study their moves before they inevitable defeat you. Then you apply that knowledge the next time you try.
I've come to the point where I feel cheated if I beat a boss at the first attempt, because you don't get to experience the full range of the boss and you don't get the same high as when you finally beat them.
DS3 and Bloodborne has made me better at video games in general, and I think better at being persistent outside of games.
Another thing is watching people practice speedruns of video games. They fail over, and over, over again, and I greatly admire the players that can just restart that section of the game and practice over and over. I hate speedrunners that rage at the game, but absolutely love the calm ones that just keep trying until they can reliably beat a difficult stage.
How was her videos not that different than the stchick that is Mr Bean. Rowan Atkinson is definitely not an idiot in real life, but that stchick sure got him attention he wouldn't have gotten any other way, because it was unique and over the top and funny.
It is also fine for her to move on to other topics. No one is forced to stay in any specific role they have invented for themselves, no matter what fans think.
What do you mean? This is exactly how it played out for her as well. It was a funny, inventive way of creating entertaining sciency-videos.
I have no idea why she sees it any other way.
>It is also fine for her to move on to other topics.
Of course ... everyone evolves. But there was never any need to look down on the content she produced that got her a level of fame.
Many struggle with anxiety and depression, and are self deprecating as a defense mechanism because the criticism of others is less harsh when you've already done it to yourself.
A lot of men) tend to perceive women as warmer, more nurturing, more approachable than their male counterparts; their approach to them is less formal, less respectful, more chummy. There are situations where that approach is appropriate, but the tendency to use it with every professional woman you meet is a problem.
Because women tend to be less numerous in CS and similar engineering professions, their name tends to be more unique than male counterparts. I know it's anecdotal but it seems to line up with my school years where depending on whether your first name or last name were often we fell back on one other other. A girl with a common first name was called by her last name, while a guy with common last name was called by his first name.
Few examples in popular culture: Hillary, Bernie (relatively unusual first name), Trump, Warren (I think no one calls you just Elizabeth, her first and last name are relatively generic so usually people use both)
In Formula 1: Lewis, Alonso, Vettel, Max (or Verstappen), Lando.
It seems mixed.
I'd definitely be annoyed if I was a professor/doctor and strangers were being overly familiar with me.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180702145605.h...
Yes, Simone is a better robotocist than most of us. That's not a compliment to her, because her dreams aim higher.
The sexist fear angle of the story is unfortunate, though. People shouldn't hold themselves back because of imagined differences in what they are allowed to do.
I highly disagree. Good comedy, especially one that stands the test of time (and not just wit du jour) is hard.
>It's a young person's game.
I thought I couldn't disagree more, but I actually do.
From Leslie Nielsen to George Carlin, a lot of my favorite comedians were grey-haired, old people.
IA WBM: https://web.archive.org/web/20191210130453/https://www.wired...
Oof. That hits the perfectionist in me hard.