Before he won Wired magazine’s Sexiest Geek of 2008 competition.
SxePhil birth name, Philip Franchini grew up in a tough living situation with divorced parents and moving around from home to home. Diagnosed early on with a genetic kidney disease Phillip faced problems that matured him faster than others his age. When pursuing post-secondary studies he left his native New York to go to the South, where his last name was such a problem for the locals to pronounce it that he actually changed it. A string of poor financial decisions left him living in a car before finally moving back home, and even though his channel was getting a bunch of views on a newly-emerging platform known as YouTube he had run out of money and was forced to sell everything including the computer he used to edit his videos.