Bizarre online profiles reveal YouTube shooter's possible motive
The Iranian-born suspect, who claimed she was the first Persian female vegan bodybuilder, was a YouTube wannabe with an alter ego.
Wednesday 4 April 2018 10:26, UK
A woman who shot three people before killing herself at YouTube HQ in California had accused the video sharing website of censorship and ranted about its "close-minded" staff.
Detectives investigating a motive for the attack may well start at Nasim Aghdam's internet accounts, where she posted prolifically and had an alter ego.
The 39-year-old animal rights activist from San Diego was a wannabe YouTube star who had complained that her videos were being filtered and relegated so people could hardly see them.
Her father Ismail Aghdam said he warned police his daughter "hated" the company and might be heading there.
YouTube had "stopped everything" and "she was angry", he told the Bay Area News Group.
Her brother Shahran Aghdam told reporters outside the family home in Menifee, Riverside County: "She was always complaining that YouTube ruined her life."
Aghdam, who emigrated to the US with her family from Iran in 1996, was a regular user of the platform and posted videos and other posts in English, Farsi and Turkish.
She reportedly had thousands of subscribers to her several YouTube channels, which have now been deleted.
Aghdam used the name Nasime Sabz on her Facebook, Instagram and Telegram accounts, as well as a personal website on which she ranted about "close-minded youtube employees" who she claimed were "filtering my videos to reduce views & suppress & discaurage [sic] me from making videos!"
As well as the number of views she was getting, Aghdam also complained about the small amount of money - 10 cents - she claimed she had received from a video which was viewed more than 366,000 times.
She even quoted Adolf Hitler, saying: "Make the lie big, Make it simple, Keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
Aghdam had a couple of websites and described herself as "the first Persian female vegan bodybuilder" on one of them.
Photographs appear to show a love of dressing up, including in elaborately embroidered dresses and bodysuits.
Celebrities also featured in her videos. One on her Facebook page, which no longer exists, was a parody of Taylor Swift. Another on one of her websites shows an image of Miley Cyrus on a clip called "The Truth About Popular Culture".
She was a staunch animal rights campaigner whose websites featured many graphic images and videos of "animal murders", "slaughters" and vivisection.
Among the many bizarre-looking images is one which shows a picture of her superimposed on a drawing of a cow in a field of flowers drinking milk from its udders.
In another, captioned "Dog skinned alive", she is pictured wearing a canine mask with painted drops of blood all over her.
She is also photographed with animals including a rabbit, bird, sheep, pig - and superimposed next to a lion in a glittering black and silver gown.
On one post on Instagram, which has also been deleted, she wrote: "No animal is stupid. They all have feelings and are not ours to abuse, kill, eat, wear...."
Aghdam was pictured at a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) rally in the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2009 over the use of pigs in military training.
She dressed in a wig and jeans with drops of painted "blood" on them, holding a plastic sword at the demonstration outside the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base.
"For me, animal rights equal human rights," she was quoted as saying in the paper.
