Val Burns: YouTube shooting gives horrifying glimpse into dark heart of our empty world

This week, Nasime Aghdam, a 38-year-old woman from San Francisco and YouTube video maker/ animal rights activist/vegan health zealot/fitness ‘guru’ went all out to narrow the gender gap in mass shootings by marching into the YouTube HQ in San Bruno, California and opening fire on employees enjoying their coffee break in the Spring sunshine on the campus patio. Aghdam seriously wounded 3 people – two women and a man - then turned the gun on herself. She died at the scene.

Apparently, none of the victims were known to her. What is known – via Aghdam’s multi-channelled social media presence – is how enraged she was that YouTube had, in the year leading up to Tuesday’s shooting, censored her videos, thus ‘depriving’ her of ‘followers’. Shortly before her attempted killing spree, she told family (and anyone else prepared to listen) that she “hated YouTube” claiming they’d “ruined her life” by taking away income she would have earned from advertising revenue.

Understandably, her family are distraught and deeply shocked by events. Speaking outside the family home, her father, clearly in distress, said, “We’re in absolute shock and can’t make sense of what happened.” The day before the shooting, Aghdam’s family contacted police to report their concern that she had not answered her phone for two days. When local police found Aghdam sleeping in her car, hundreds of miles from home but in the vicinity of the YouTube campus, family members claim they told police they had to monitor her because they were worried “she might do something because she hated YouTube so much.” After questioning Aghdam in her car, police let her go because it “was a very normal conversation and there was nothing in her behaviour that suggested anything unusual.” She was on the YouTube campus, shooting with intent to kill, within a few hours of this “very normal conversation.”

In her videos and online rants, Aghdam appears far from normal. If by ‘normal’ we mean someone we can relate to, warm to and whose perspective we may appreciate (even if we don’t agree with it), she is the very antithesis of ‘normal.’ Remote and uncomfortable in her body, she demonstrates fitness exercises that she somehow manages to turn into something sinister and weird. Whether she’s ranting about YouTube or giving a recipe for vegan lasagne, her presence and delivery are unchanging: she’s angry, aggrieved, petulant and entitled. We are much more likely to look on in a state of subdued but escalating horror, rather than in adoration. And adoration is clearly what she demanded and required most of all. Platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook have become the refuge of those who otherwise can’t find a sense of belonging anywhere else in the world.

Can’t bear the thought of 9-5 and living out a life in ignominy? Get a web cam or phone and launch yourself into virtual celebrity. Never mind if you’re famous for being weird or bad, at least you’re not packing shelves in the local Walmart. At least you’re unique. Even better, you might actually earn some filthy lucre simply by doing what you love most: telling the world how special you are.

In censoring Aghdam’s videos, YouTube may, or may not, have anticipated the depth of wrath and indignation triggered in her, but it is clear they never imagined that she’d storm into their HQ and start shooting their employees. I can’t help thinking, though, that if you play with fire, there’s a chance you’ll get burnt. In providing folk like Aghdam with a worldwide forum where she can enact and reinforce her narcissism and gross sense of entitlement, it’s not exactly a quantum leap to imagine the possibility of gruesome and violent consequences when her virtual ‘lollipop’ is taken away from her. She clearly believed she should have been able to feed her insatiable hunger for adoration and money forever. Taking the ‘feeder’ source away from her was bound to have consequences much more severe and destructive than throwing her dummy out of the pram.