BURBANK, CA (KDLM) – Sivert Klefsaas and his mom Lorna from Motley, MN recently appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show after their social media challenge went viral two months ago.
Sivert accepted the challenge. When he turned 18 in February, his mom gave him a check for $1,800.
The Klefsaas’ challenge went viral, and even garnered the attention of Ellen DeGeneres, who flew the two out to her studios in Burbank, California last month to tape a segment together. The episode aired on Thursday, April 28th.
“I can’t take all the credit for this idea,” Lorna told Ellen. “I was in the car and heard about a 16-for-16 challenge on the radio. I don’t remember the specifics, but I wondered if something like that would work for Sivert and for social media. He has three older sisters, and we had varying success navigating social media with them: battling things like self-esteem and feeling badly. I was hoping to come up with a way to encourage him to stay off of it for a little bit.”
“I totally fell for it,” said Sivert. “I was all in. I was like ‘I’m gonna get a house, and I’m gonna get a car, and maybe I won’t have to work right away.’ I was convinced that it would be easy money. But sophomore year, it got a little more difficult. My friends were all keeping up with each other outside of school and making great connections, but at that point I had already invested three years.”
“I wasn’t too surprised that he stuck it out,” added Lorna. “We had the advantage that he wasn’t on social media before the challenge started, so the challenge really was holding him off on starting. But he’s very competitive and setting it up as a challenge really helped him stick it out.”
After their conversation, Ellen gave Sivert an opportunity to make up for some of the viral challenges he’d missed out on, challenging him to the Whipped Cream challenge, the bottle flip, and the cup challenge. After the challenge, Ellen presented Sivert a check for $10,000 to add to his $1,800 to go towards his education (Sivert will attend the University of Northwestern-St. Paul in the fall), as well as a check for $5,000 to donate to the charity of his choice. Lorna tells KDLM that Sivert will donate the $5,000 to Special Olympics.
Latest News
