The Misery Machine - Vegan YouTuber Gets Demonetized and Goes BALLISTIC

Starting point is 00:00:00 Imagine you devoted all your free time to building a YouTube channel. It took you months, even years, of endlessly perfecting your videos and working on your craft. Then the rug is pulled out from under you. Practically overnight you lose most of your views and YouTube ends up hiding your channel from your fans without their consent. How would you feel knowing all the blood, sweat, and tears were for nothing? All that time wasted. Would you do something about it?

Starting point is 00:00:29 How far would you go? Today's episode involves someone who, when this happened to them, didn't just make a fuss. She went all the way. Before we start, since YouTube is very sensitive regarding videos surrounding this case, I want to be clear that we do not condone any of the actions in this video. This video is not promoting or glorifying the actions of the perpetrator, nor are we encouraging others to do the same. The intent of this episode is to offer a complete chronicle of events.

Starting point is 00:01:02 touch on subjects that may have been contributing factors in the motive. Nassim Najafi Agdam, also known as Green Nassim, was born on April 5, 1979, in Irmia, Iran, to loving parents that had immigrated from nearby Azerbaijan. In 1996, the Ogdom family immigrated to San Diego when Nassim was 16 years old in order to escape persecution in Iran, ultimately settling in the city of Menifee. Although the majority of the family welcomed the movement, and the promise of safety and freedom, Nassim did not. As a teen, she refused to integrate into society and make friends,

Starting point is 00:01:39 and elected to speak in Farsi whenever she could. She never dated or sought out romantic partners, and later in life, she would move in with her grandmother in Riverside. The Ogden family were registered members of the Baha'i faith, which is a religion whose teachings are based on three principles, the unity of God, the unity of religion, and the unity of humanity. A notable member of this faith is Rain Willis. from the office. In terms of religion, it's relatively new. It was established in 1863,

Starting point is 00:02:09 and it was initially developed in Iran in parts of the Middle East where it's faced ongoing persecution since its inception. In fact, hundreds of followers have been arrested or even put to death in Iran for following this faith. Due to her interpretation of these beliefs, Nassim became vegan at the age of seven because she felt, in her words, that the principle of unity of humanity should extend to all of God's creatures, not just humans. Cruelty to animals is strictly prohibited in Baha'i laws, and Nassim took this prohibition seriously. She did not consume or wear animal products of any kind

Starting point is 00:02:44 and would outwardly criticize anyone she saw eating meat, including her own family. Nassim was a radical animal rights activist and would often join the people for the ethical treatment of animals or pita at their protests. A 2009 news report in the San Diego U.S. Union Tribune included a woman who appears to be Nassim protesting with Pita. In a photo, Nassim was seen wearing a wig, a black shirt that read Planet Hell across her waist,

Starting point is 00:03:12 and jeans with large blood drops painted on them. In her hand, she wielded a plastic sword to protest the U.S. Marines' killing of pigs in a military training exercise. The controversial training in question had become standard on numerous U.S. military bases and off-site locations across the country during the war in the Middle East. The pigs are connected to IV tubes delivering anesthesia and are euthanized when the training is complete. It is intended to prepare frontline troops for the gore and the pressure they'll encounter treating wounds on the battlefields. Nassim was quoted as saying, for me, animal rights equal human rights.

Starting point is 00:03:49 In 2011, Nassim began a non-profit organization called Peace Thunder. The business was eventually dissolved and it's unknown if it earned any success, but it was intended to be an animal rights foundation. Additionally, Nassim had also trained to be a pilot. She also posted on a website called Interfaith Vegan Alliance about meeting members of the Baha'i community in 2015 at the Leeds Quaker House to discuss women's rights, social justice, family units, and animal rights. She emphasized that she hoped the Baha'i community would be more involved in nutrition

Starting point is 00:04:22 and vegetarianism after their discussion. Even though Nassim chose to isolate herself from her peers in the real world outside of her activism, she had a larger-than-life personality on the internet. She often wore wigs and flamboyant clothing that hugged her tiny frame, many of which she made herself. Nassim had a YouTube presence under a number of channels, discussing topics such as veganism, animal rights, handmade crafts, fitness, and comedy. As Nassim spoke English, Turkish, and Farsi, she gained a bit of reach overseas. She was also active on Telegram, Instagram, Daily Motion, and also ran two separate websites,

Starting point is 00:05:00 NaseemaSabs.com, which means green breeze in Persian, and nesemabc.com. Although most of her work has been taken down and can only be found re-uploaded on other sites or via the Wayback Machine. Her telegram account is still active and contains graphic content involving animal harm,

Starting point is 00:05:18 which Naseem used to further her message. Unlike what many people think, most channels make little to no money from YouTube, and the majority that do aren't receiving life-changing income, let alone a full-time income. So while Nassim was generating a small income from her combined channels, she still had to live at home with her family. She also helped out at her father Ishmael's electrical contracting business, Stars Electric. With 20,000 combined YouTube subscribers and 50,000 Instagram followers,

Starting point is 00:05:48 Nassim thought she was really getting somewhere. She even began receiving some television coverage in Turkey as a result of her Barcy YouTube channel. However, this all changed in 2016 with what's now commonly known amongst YouTubers, as the adpocalypse, which is the term used to describe mass advertiser boycotts and withdrawals on YouTube. Prior to this, YouTube was a bit of a Wild West platform resorts, with creators featuring graphic content and flagrant copyright violations, content that would never be allowed to stay up on YouTube nowadays. So what did this mean for creators like Nassin? Well, in August of 2016, YouTube announced that it would be shifting to more family-friendly content,

Starting point is 00:06:31 with videos containing specific search terms being shadow banned, meaning creators that made controversial or graphic content would see a decrease in views and subs as YouTube would no longer be pushing them to a wider audience. Folks that had initially quit their jobs and were making a decent living off their YouTube ad sense revenue, were seeing their payouts cut in half or more and had to scramble to rebrand in order to remain advertiser friendly so they could still pay their bills. More and more videos that were previously monetized were now either showing limited to no ads, which doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. This is what creators referred to as demonetization. YouTube will still feature ads in the

Starting point is 00:07:11 creator's video. However, the creator will receive little, if any, payout for their work, and YouTube will instead pocket 100% of that revenue from the ads they choose to run on that creator's video. As you know from our previous episode, this is still very much a thing. You may ask, how did we get here? And what prompted these changes? In February of 2017, Swedish YouTuber Felix Shelberg,

Starting point is 00:07:36 who you may know as PewDie Pie, came under fire for posting videos that YouTube deemed to be hate speech. At the same time, other extremist content was surfacing, leading to the UK government, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Johnson & Johnson,

Starting point is 00:07:51 and many other major brands pulling or pausing their advertisements on YouTube. In May 2017, Kendall Jenner was featured in a YouTube Pepsi ad consisting of her giving a Pepsi can to an officer during a protest between civil rights activists and the police, resolving the tension between both groups. Due to the public outcry, Pepsi removed all future ads from YouTube, furthering the cycle of advertisers drifting away from the site. During the summer of 2017, advertisers dwindled even more, only being shown on channels that were considered family-friendly.

Starting point is 00:08:25 This caused many smaller, aspiring creators to leave the site, having become discouraged from being a creator on the platform. Those that stayed changed or deleted their old videos, titles, thumbnails, and content so as not to be demonetized or banned from the platform. Some even changed niches entirely. In November of 2017, concerns regarding improper kids' content surface, causing Mars, Adidas, H.B., Deutsche Bank, and other, to pull ads from YouTube. You might remember this as ElsaGate. YouTube responded by publishing a blog post and terminating one of the channels

Starting point is 00:09:03 publishing the questionable content, Toy Freaks, which had 8.5 million subscribers. In January 2018, YouTube further updated its policies, restricting the partner program to channels with more than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours per year. This caused outrage in the community,

Starting point is 00:09:23 especially from smaller creators who couldn't reach the new requirements. Now, as a creator who has gone through this firsthand, I can tell you, it is a grind. During this time, the Aoki Gahara incident regarding Logan Paul surfaced, causing the widespread belief that YouTube was punishing small creators for what he had done. For those unaware of what exactly occurred, on December 31st, 2017, Logan Paul uploaded a video to his YouTube channel, depicting the recently deceased corpse of a man who died by hanging himself. Back to Nassim. Rather than strategized to find a way to make her content more family-friendly,

Starting point is 00:10:00 or even find ways to tow the line of what's acceptable, the same decided to double down and keep producing the content that she had been making to begin with. Although some of her videos were more light-hard and even goofy in nature, a good portion of her content which was facing demonetization, were related to her number one passion, animal rights, and included graphic videos of animals being killed, such as dog-skinned alive, warning evil fur meat trade, and pet dog cooked alive in China, graphic animal torture. Oftentimes, Nassim would also include fairly graphic and banned words in her titles as well. Not only were Nassim's animal

Starting point is 00:10:39 rights videos feeling the wrath of the new guidelines, some of her workout videos were being demonetized and flagged as 18 plus content. Whether this was correct or not relies heavily on taste and interpretation. In some of the clips that are still available online, Nassim can be seen laying on her back and skin-tight garb thrusting her pelvis into the air. To be fair, it was nothing that you wouldn't see in any normal workout video, and was nothing to clutch your pearls over. However, Nassim questioned how artists such as Nikki Minaj or Miley Cyrus

Starting point is 00:11:11 could post far more provocative content and not only be allowed to do this, so, but be monetized on the platform for set content. And to be fair, Nassim had a point. With all this in mind, Nassim saw many of her videos that were previously making ad revenue demonetized, which she took as a personal slight, even though many bigger channels begin creating content explaining the adpocalypse and how the YouTube backend actually worked. Nassim took to her personal website to protest the new guidelines, stating, quote, be aware, Dictatorship exists, in all countries, but with different tactics. They only care for personal short-term profits and do anything to reach their goals, even by fooling simple-minded people, hiding the truth,

Starting point is 00:11:56 manipulating science and everything, putting public mental and physical health at risk, harming non-human animals, polluting environment, destroying family values, promoting materialism and sexual degeneration in the name of freedom, and turning people into program robots." end quote. Nassim then went on to post a quote that's often falsely attributed to a notorious evil dictator. However, his name is a banned word on YouTube, but I'm sure you can guess who we're referring to. In reality, the quote was actually said by Joseph Goebbels, which was, quote, make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. She continued, quote, there was no free speech in the real world, and you will be suppressed

Starting point is 00:12:44 for telling the truth that is not supported by the system. Videos of targeted users are filtered and merely relegated so that people can hardly see their videos. There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube or any other video sharing site. Your channel will grow if they want to, end quote. Nassim even went as far as to claim that YouTube was going so far as to hide her personal website from search engine results on Google.

Starting point is 00:13:09 Nassim found that when she entered her name into the search engine, her websites didn't pop up like they had in the past. This was a reasonable conclusion as YouTube is owned by Google. In February of 2017, she traveled to YouTube headquarters and held up a poster board sign that read, YouTube dictatorship, hidden policy, promote stupidity, discrimination, suppression of truth, share if you hate discrimination. The sign also featured a link to one of her now defunct websites. Many questions in the comments were posed towards Nassim's mental health. If she was mentally ill, or if she had any particular disorder.

Starting point is 00:13:44 A common response to these questions from her that I'll paraphrase was, I don't have any special mental or physical disease, but I do live on a planet filled with disease, disorders, perversions, and injustices. On January 16th, 2018, Nassim Ogdom continued to spiral out of control. She purchased and registered a 9mm Smith & Weston pistol from a gun store called the Gun Range in San Diego. and on Saturday, March 31st, Nassim snapped. After getting into a fight with her family over their lifestyle choices and her hatred of YouTube, Nassim stormed out of the house.

Starting point is 00:14:24 And unfortunately, this would be the very last day that any of her family members saw her alive. Fearing for her safety as well as the safety of others, Ishmael Ogden phoned the police to report his daughter missing. Due to her extreme hatred for YouTube, her father was worried that she might try to go to the company's offices once again. However, in the early morning hours just before dawn on April 3rd, 2018, police officers in Mountain View, California, just 25 miles south of YouTube's headquarters, found Assam sleeping in her car in a Walmart parking lot.

Starting point is 00:14:59 Hey, police. Hi, are you going to see him? Hey, so you reported as missing. Yeah, as missing from San Diego? Okay. You don't live with them anymore? Okay, can I just ask if you don't mind why you left? Okay. Do you have idea on you by you?

Starting point is 00:15:50 So did you just decide to move or were you just not getting along with your family? With your brother? Your father. How long have you been here in Mountain View? I've left home. Oh wow. Okay. I guess you've never done that before, huh?

Starting point is 00:16:37 No. Okay, so your family was worried about you. I guess they called San Diego Police Department and reported you missing. Oh, you didn't tell your parents or family or anything? Did you tell anybody where you went? Did you tell anybody where you went? Okay. Have they tried calling you?

Starting point is 00:17:09 Oh, you don't have a phone or you didn't answer? But did they try calling you? Okay. Oh, okay. Do you have a phone on you at all? Do you have a phone? Okay. Do you mind if I have it?

Starting point is 00:17:34 I won't give it to them. So all we're going to do, we just had to make sure that you were okay. So we're gonna we have to call your dad. We're just gonna let them know that you're fine and you wish not to be contacted. And we checked your, well, we have to tell them, we have to say, we have to tell them that we found you, right? I mean, legally we have to do that. We have to say, well, we found her. She is fine.

Starting point is 00:18:05 She left home. She doesn't want to be contacted. And that's all we tell them. Despite a warning from her father that Nassim could pose a threat to herself and others, the 39-year-old woman was free to leave. Both Nassim's father and brother have spoken out and insisted that they've spoken to police twice, expressing fear that Nassim was not in the right frame of mind and should be watched out of concern for what she might do,

Starting point is 00:18:32 a fact that police agencies deny. In fact, according to the officers, quote, at no point during our roughly 20-minute interaction with her, did she mention anything about YouTube if she was upset with them or that she had planned to harm herself or others. She was calm and cooperative, end quote. What the officers didn't know, however, was that Nassim was arms and in just 11 hours was about to seek her revenge on those whom she believed had slighted her. It was a sunny day in San Bruno, California, and employees at YouTube headquarters were out enjoying their respective lunches in the office's large courtyard. After visiting a nearby gun range, Nassim Ogden parked her car in a facility across the street

Starting point is 00:19:17 and made her way over to her target location. It was approximately 1246 p.m. when Nassim produced her 9mm pistol and began firing without any rhyme or reason into the crowd of employees. Nassim's gun had a capacity of 10 rounds, and she emptied one magazine before reloading. Among those hit were two women ages 32 and 27, as well as a 36-year-old man. Another woman injured her ankle when she fell fleeing the scene. No names of the victims have ever been released. The courtyard cleared out fairly quickly,

Starting point is 00:19:51 and the facility was soon locked down with employees posting on Twitter from inside the building about the horrors that they had just experienced. What Nassin did not anticipate, however, was how quickly the police would respond. A mere 200 seconds after the first shots were fired, police arrived on the scene. Without anyone else to take her, her frustrations out on and finding herself without any escape, 39-year-old Nassim Agdam turned her weapon

Starting point is 00:20:18 on herself, taking her own life at 12.53 p.m. Although some reports indicate that Nassim shot herself in the head, the pathology report from the San Mateo County Coroner's office showed something very different. Nassim actually held her pistol to her chest at a 15-degree downward angle and shot herself in the heart. The bullet hit her left lung before it passed through the left rib and out of her body. There was no evidence of alcohol or drugs in her system or any other medical conditions that might have contributed to her mental state. Nassim was dressed as flamboyantly in death as she was in her videos. She wore black pants and a white sweater with pastel colored patterns with two pairs of socks under tricolored sneakers. She had just put on

Starting point is 00:21:03 fresh lipstick and tied a black and gold scarf around her neck before exacting her revenge upon YouTube and even after she collapsed onto the ground her black sunglasses remained a fix to the top of her head all four YouTube employees that were injured in the attack were treated at both Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Stanford University Medical Center although some of their injuries were critical all four survived the attack thereby making Nassim's death the only casualty from the incident in a press conference San Bruno's police chief Ed Barbarini said police suspect Nassim's primary motive was her frustration with the policies and practices of YouTube,

Starting point is 00:21:42 and that police were attempting to gain access to her social media accounts in order to further understand her exact motives. He also explained that police had no reason to believe that she was selecting specific individuals to fire at. In the aftermath of the attack, as his family home was being raided by ATF agents, Nassim's father apologized for his daughter's actions and said he didn't understand how a woman who devoted so much energy

Starting point is 00:22:07 to protecting animals could open fire on innocent people because of a grudge against a company. Quote, she never hurt one animal, one aunt. I don't know how she did like this. I apologize to all the U.S. people, all the humans. I am sorry. I can't believe it. End quote.

The Misery Machine - Vegan YouTuber Gets Demonetized and Goes BALLISTIC

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