- Hey, you, my name is
Thomas 'TomSka' Ridgewell. And welcome back to The
Complete History of Me, show and tell series about
me, Thomas 'TomSka' Ridgewell and my life called The
Complete History of Me. We rejoin our hero, who is
me, Thomas 'TomSka' Ridgewell during the death throes
of my teens aged 19. My YouTube channel has
around 10,000 subscribers, that asdfmovie thing I
released not too long ago, now has over a million views, and I've just received my first paycheck from YouTube for $100. Oh, yeah. Back at a web comic
convention, I meet James, asdfmovie's animator, and I
gave him a 1/3 of that money, a crisp 20 pound note. That seems perfectly fair, and I'm sure this will not come up again. Starting my second year at university, I rent and move into a
place with my girlfriend Amy and her friends Tim and Laurel, the latter of whom I've
just invited to be a part of Eddsworld and then killed
off in the same Eddisode. At a student fair, I
commandeer an empty table and start the Tom Society. Somehow I sign on over 200 members by pointing at a blank piece
of paper and saying join now. I obviously do nothing
with this information. People are just weird and
like to sign up for things. Through a mixture of stress, laziness, and bad eating habits, I
begin piling on the weight and soon reach a personal record
of 210 pounds or 15 stone. Go me. - [Captain Falcon] Yes! - After a year of tinkering
I release asdfmovie2, animated by my friend Edd, who also replaces my
younger cousin in voicing the I Like Trains Kid, its
most popular character. - I like trains. (train honks) - I like trains. (train honks) - Ashton Kutcher tweets out the video, which was really cool in 2010, because he had the most Twitter followers. Yay. As I pile on the pounds,
negative comments about my weight pile up, particularly on a
video by my best friend Chris. And after one exceptionally
unflattering encounter with a full body mirror,
I just stop eating, you know, the healthy response. For three solid months,
I live off around 300 to 500 calories a day on
what I called the Omega diet. It was basically starvation. I wouldn't recommend it. Although I almost did once. I pick up a side gig writing,
producing, directing, and editing videos for the National Policing
Improvement Agency. You can rest easy at night
knowing that the police on your streets were trained by this guy. Between my second and
third year of university, my girlfriend Amy leaves
me in charge of her rats. One of which immediately dies of cancer, and I don't know what to do. So I panic and put it in a Jaffa Cake box and leave that in the garden. I was running on very few calories, okay? Anyway, here's a picture of me airsofting. The massive gun is to make
up for my tiny self-esteem. With my YouTube channel about
to hit 100,000 subscribers, my friend Chris and I
decided to legitimize our little CakeBomb crew
and get our own office. We nickname the office Plan B, so that we can say, it's
time to go to Plan B. And we never actually say
that because it's stupid. It's here that I began
hiring animators en masse to launch TomSka and Bing. A series based on my
friendship with Chris. With no points of reference or experience within the industry, their payments are embarrassingly pitiful. And as I said before, I'm sure none of this will come up again. But speaking of animators
getting a raw deal, my friend Edd's cancer makes a comeback but they've caught it early they say, so everything should be fine. Myself, Chris and a few of our new friends began a weekly tradition
of going to the pub and we unironically call it man time. Soon after, the CakeBomb crew, all head down to London MCM Comic Con to man our first ever merch table. We meet loads of lovely people. Some of whom I still see to this day. And our table is so popular that the people either
side of us have to move, which was actually super awkward. At the start of 2011 though, It seems that CakeBomb has run its course with almost every single
original member or friend no longer in our lives, it appears that we're
stronger as individuals. So the site shuts down,
the name fades into memory and we all move forward as
friends, not colleagues. It's here that I start trading as the one man company Turbo Punch. Along with the death of CakeBomb, I decide to tweak a
show I'd been working on about us to star fictional
characters instead. It's called Crash Zoom and animation on the first episode begins. Stuck in a particularly dull lecture, I sketch up a few parody
advertisements for my university. When the videos come out, the establishment is not best pleased. So I hide away for a few days until the videos spike in popularity and the university has no choice but to pretend that they love them. This also ushers in what I call
my golden era of YouTubing. Despite almost coming to a premature end, my time at university concludes naturally with my dissertation on the
predictability of viral video. I wrote it in four days
and some really cool people let me interview them for it. Attempting to put my struggles
with weight loss to good use, I make a series in which
I give other people advice on how to lose weight. The advice is very bad and luckily the series never comes out. Although I do manage to explode
an ice cream in my hand, and permanently damage my hearing. To celebrate our freedom
from higher education, a group of us go on holiday to Turkey, and it is wholesome and fun. And this becomes a thing for some reason. (upbeat electronic music) Although, while I'm there,
I learn that my girlfriend is planning on moving to Scotland
to get a master's degree. So our relationship comes to an abrupt end and I wind up crying and
vomiting drunk in a bathtub. Wholesome fun. I say goodbye to Lincoln
and moved back home with my parents. During this time I attend my
first ever summer in the city and realize that nobody
really knows what I look like, so I should probably make some
more live action sketches. So I latch onto the nearest and only amateur
cinematographer I can find. That's Ciaran. I graduate university and do
this thing while I'm there. Ah, that'll never get old. While visiting my friend Chris's house possibly for the last
time as our friendship has become increasingly
strained over the years, I accidentally cross paths with his sister Jenny, once again. And it turns out I am
nowhere near as over here as I thought I was, and we
soon after begin dating. Sure. Meanwhile, my friend Edd is
going through chemotherapy but things are looking good and he should be out of hospital and able to move in with me very soon. After a few wasted house
hunting trips to London, I finally find an apartment
in Wimbledon for us to both move into and begin our careers as creative partners. Side note, convincing a
landlord that YouTuber is a real job, not easy at all. Shortly after moving to London though, my backpack is stolen,
my camera, hard drive, laptop, sketchbook even my glasses are all gone in an instant. And with them go a bunch of projects, including the nearly
completed Crash Zoom pilot. And it doesn't get much worse
than that, except it does. Edd's health suddenly gets a lot worse and the doctors start
running out of options. His room in our apartment ends up going to an old friend
of mine from university and a couple of friends of Edd's that were living in his house, get forced to move in with me instead. What's funny is that,
as I mentioned earlier, we are currently in the middle
of my golden era on YouTube. I am churning out some of the best and most popular content I will ever make, but that all pales in
comparison to what happens next. Edd dies. - Ready. - Yeah. - Was just making animations for you guys. (siren blaring) (glass smashing) - Shortly after Edd's funeral, I'm told that he wanted his
show Eddsworld to continue. And in what I can only
describe as well-meaning grief inspired denial, I launch a fundraiser called Eddsworld: Legacy to keep the show going
for a few more episodes. I reckon it'll only take
me a year to complete. Yep. Due to the abrupt loss of my co-tenant, my estate agents kindly allow me to move out of my current
apartment a year and a half early on the condition that they oversee me moving into a new place through them. And that happens. They then immediately
claim it didn't happen and charge me 10,000 pounds for abandoning my current apartment. So... that was cool. Probably the result of
another stage of grief, but I feel an overwhelming need
for both control and chaos. So I cut off all of my hair, as you do. I'm introduced to a personal trainer and begin to eating right
and regularly exercising. It's not exactly fun, but
the routine and discipline definitely helps me
keep my head above water during this time. While visiting my ex in Scotland and hosting a little YouTube meetup, I become the 96th YouTuber
to hit a million subscribers. So naturally, we have a dance party. I notice that the URL
youtube.com/fuck is unclaimed. So I put in a formal request for it to redirect to my channel. And surprisingly, it's somehow approved. A lot of people stumble
across my work thanks to that. Following the Eddsworld:
Legacy fundraiser, we make our first charitable
donation of the show's profits. And I'm just so glad
that something positive can come of the grim situation. I still don't really know what it was. Maybe grief, maybe
stress, maybe self-doubt, but by the start of 2013, I'm no longer able to write on my own. Words don't come to me naturally. And I'm finding it impossible
to hold onto thoughts. A friend from our London
man time pub nights, Eddie, offers to help me work on my script and it quickly becomes clear that his enthusiasm and
talent is invaluable. So we begin working
together very regularly. But while that creative
relationship is just beginning, my relationship with
Jenny comes to an end. Midway through an advertising
campaign for YouTube, higher-ups at Google discover
that I own the fuck URL, and not only am I immediately
pulled from the campaign but they threaten to
terminate all of my accounts. You literally gave me the URL, guys. Anyway, it should probably be clear by now that my mind is not doing too well. And weirdly it's the release
of Grand Theft Auto V that's the straw that
breaks the camel's back. A game that I'd been
looking forward to for years comes out and I feel... nothing. And come to think of it, I
haven't felt anything good for a very long time. And my friends have started
saying that they miss the old me and I don't know what that means anymore. So, when I feel up to
it, I go to the doctors and I'm pretty quickly diagnosed
with severe depression. I'm referred to a therapist and put onto a course of antidepressants. But the doctor very quickly
came to the assessment that, hey... you have severe depression. It's not all bad though, as I find myself in a new relationship
with a girl named Tara and that was good, but now
let's get back to the bad stuff. I don't react to the antidepressants
well to say the least. In the early hours of one morning I have a huge panic attack and begin frantically emailing everyone that I regard to have a mutually
toxic relationship with, telling them, amongst other things, that I don't think we should be friends or know each other anymore. This goes about as well as you'd expect, and my social circle largely implodes. - We refer to it as the
nights of many messages. (TomSka laughs) - So you have the night of many messages. For me, it's called the fuck off five. (Bing laughs) Because of my inability
to sustain friendships, I develop an aversion to
displaying photographs of people I care about, for fear that any picture I put up, I may have to one day take back down. I begin obsessively,
oversharing and delve headfirst into the world of social justice activism as aggressively as I am ill informed. I start fights with anyone
I disagree with online and go looking for trouble where there really needn't be any. Remember those animators from earlier, the ones that I underpaid, well, they're back and
they brought their friends and they're all rightfully angry and I'm not handling
that very well either. Oh, and then for a little while I tried to become a sex
educator with an advice blog. And while I'm proud of what
was eventually achieved, it was not without incident. And I also posted a
tasteful nude at one point. I made a mess and a fool of myself and I did it all so very publicly, but, hey, I celebrated my
first Christmas, that was nice. Okay, 2014, new year,
new me, you know what? Let's try a different
type of antidepressant. Side effects apparently may
include increased appetite and rapid weight gain, but
I'm sure that'll be fine. On a more sophisticated note though, I'm invited to take part in a
debate at Cambridge University over whether or not YouTube
is the future of media. My side argues that no,
it's not and we win. So, yay. But also, oh no. The time has come for me
to move out of my home in West London, what
friendships I have left have been pushed to their limits. People need a break from me
and I need a break from people. Also, I should probably get
my foot on the property ladder while I still have some
sort of stable income. I spend a few months couch
surfing and house hunting and I also gained a lot
of weight really fast. So maybe those new meds
weren't such a good idea. While at VidCon, I get an email, prompted by my instability
and oversharing, my forcefully estranged
ex-best friend Chris wishes to be disassociated
from me in every way. A contract is signed, his name is removed from all my channels and we cease all further communication. The blood is... very bad. In lighter news though, I finally find and move into my own home at the other side of London, away from everyone else I
know, just like I wanted. I'm not homeless anymore, yeah! Similarly, I get a new
office for the now legitimate Turbo Punch Ltd. My editor Elliot, my
producer Krystal and my me, move in and quickly renovate
it into the man-child man cave you see before you now. Oh yeah, we also released
a game called KatataK, that was really cool. You can't download it now though because the company we made
it with went out of business, which is less cool. In 2015 though, Crash Zoom, the series that have been
in and out out of hiatus for over four years finally
made it to the small screen. After a few months of settling in though, it's time to make my house into a home. And by home, I mean a dust,
noise and stress filled building site hellhole
for the next six months. Then a bunch of really
shitty things happen in rapid succession. My parents' marriage
comes to an abrupt end and they get divorced. Fun fact, it still messes you
up even if you're an adult. My relationship with
Tara also comes to an end but at least Dudley, the family dog is, just kidding, he's dead. Okay, I wanna take a quick break to say, I know that this video has become a bit suffocatingly negative. I'm trying to focus on first
times, significant moments and personal milestones. And around this point in my life, most of those were just
kind of big downers or at least the ones that stuck with me, the ones that I remember were. That said though, I learned the hard way that you can't put shoes
in the tumble dryer. They're not my shoes,
they're Elliot's shoes. Fuck your shoes. Here I enter what I call
my era of introspection, where I start looking back at my life, taking stock and trying to
slowly set some things right. I launch a series called Thanks Day, where I try to give
credit to all the people I've worked with over the years. I start reaching out to
and setting things right with creative partners that I
may have wronged or underpaid. And I launch this series, The Complete History of Me. But unfortunately, none of that matters, because at the age of 25,
I die in a car accident or at least that's what 4chan convinced a lot of the internet had happened. Coincidentally though, I did very nearly break
my neck shortly after, falling over a railing
drunkenly one night. Don't worry, my face broke my fall. Krystal takes her leave from Turbo Punch and Eddie joins the team as
my full-time creative partner. We're briefly hired by BBC Comedy to make our own pilot for a sketch show. Upon its completion, they
never get back to us, but they also never fire us. So for all I know, I
still work for the BBC. Riding or more specifically cashing in on a wave of YouTubers releasing books, I revamp all the old asdf comics, adapt most of the series
and release a book which I then take on a cross-country tour. For some reason. The reason is money, obviously. On January 1st 2016, I began
dating a new lady, Charlie. I was gonna wait until
I was back from holiday to ask her if she wanted
to go out with me, but I figured New Year's Day would make for a cooler anniversary. I begin uploading daily selfies under the mind-blowingly
innovative hashtag #selfiesteem, in an attempt to boost my self-esteem. It kind of works, but it also
becomes so much of a chore. I did get this selfie out of it though. Damn, that's a good selfie. I embark on a medically
supervised ketosis diet. Truth be told, I felt too
scared and fat to lose weight the quote, unquote, right way. I needed it gone fast. Eddsworld: Legacy finally comes to a close with the release of its
finale titled The End. While I made a lot of
mistakes over those four years and it took a huge toll on my mental and financial wellbeing, I am still immensely
proud of what was achieved and I will always remember the show with such great fondness, and also, it raised a
lot of money for charity, so that was great. Speaking of financial strain, I take what's left of my savings and pay off my mom's mortgage
following my parents' divorce. I can't tell anyone about this though, for fear that it would be too
divisive within my family. Fun. Without Eddsworld over, we suddenly have a lot
more time on our hands, so I start a weekly vlog
series with the hope of connecting with my audience, but also just giving
Elliot something to do. ♪ I said Beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ ♪ I said beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ ♪ I said beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ ♪ I said beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ ♪ I said beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ ♪ I said beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ ♪ I said beep, beep, I'm a sheep ♪ Despite making strides with
my diet, I fall off the wagon and find it impossible to get
back into the groove of it. I try but repeatedly fail to restart it. My YouTube channel turns 10 years old and the horrifying reality
that some of the people watching my videos are
younger than my videos really starts to set in. I win the Community Spirit
Award at Summer in the City for how much work I put
into my meet and greets, which is funny because
just five years earlier, how few people I met at that event, is the reason I completely
changed the way I made videos. Perhaps spurred on by my
failure to lose weight, the stresses of life or just the ebbs and flows of depression, but here my mental health
takes a massive dive and despite all the good
things I have going on, I begin obsessively ideating suicide. But yay, it's my face
on billboards and buses. Charlie moves in and before long we get my pugalier called Squidge. Look at him taking his first
little steps into my home. Oh, he's a good boy. I'm mildly distracted from how sad I am. Again, though, despite how
much I have going on for me on the surface, I am still
deep into a really dark place and super into the idea of
not being around anymore. I consume dangerous
amounts of food and alcohol with the intention of not stopping until my body just kinda gives up. It just seems a little easier
and tastier than real suicide. But perhaps a positive side effect of this is that I began to make peace with all of the lost love and friendships. And so I began printing, framing
and displaying photographs of special people and special
moments in my life once again. Speaking of making peace though, guess whose parents just got
back together and remarried? Okay. And guess who just had
his first real Christmas with his own lights and
his own tree and presents and everything? It's me, this video's about me. Obviously the answer's gonna be be me. After both getting particularly
drunk at a movie screening, my old best friend
Chris and I cross paths. We hug it out, cry a little bit and soon after meetup and agree to scrap the contract from 2014. We know that things can't
go back to how they were, but we can at least both move on no longer burdened by anger and sadness. Having become disillusioned
with over 10 years of making YouTube videos, I boot up a series called #CONTENT, in the hopes of rediscovering what it is that makes this fun. Eddie's baby boy Rick gets christened and I become a godfather. I still have no idea what that entails so I'm just gonna wait until I have a school bully to beat up. The Last Week series comes to a close at 100 episodes and Last
Month takes its place. I get summoned for jury service and put on a case that was super pleasant and makes it very easy to sleep at night. Just kidding, it was
about child molestation. Anyway, meet Pink, Charlie's Doberman. After making six episodes of
Crash Zoom off our own backs, we launch a Kickstarter to
help fund the next season. It hits its goal pretty quickly and now we gotta make it, damn it. Desperate for closure on
all the public mishaps and scandals I've had over the years, mostly in and around 2013, I put together a gigantic master post archiving, acknowledging and apologizing for pretty much every
single one of my missteps in the hope of being able to move on and for the internet to do the same. And it actually kind of works. At least for me, it helped
a lot with the things that keep me up at night. Thanks to my support
network, emotional closure, the master post, self-reflection, and a positive spike in my mental health, I suddenly come out the other side of that deep, deep depression and stop wanting to eat myself to death. Maybe I'll try doing right by
myself and my body once again. And that brings us to
the end of this video, but fortunately not the end of my life. Thank you for following
me on my journey so far and all the twists and
turns my life has taken. If there's one thing you can
take away from this video, it's that everything in life happens. I'll see you in 2027 for The Complete History of
Me part four, TomSka out.
