Yesterday, a 38-year old woman named Nasim Aghdam from San Diego drove up to San Bruno in the Bay Area, went to the YouTube headquarters, shot 4 people, then killed herself. She was an animal rights activist and “extreme” vegan who claimed that YouTube was suppressing her content online.

Here’s the news article on MSNBC.

Originally I was going to title this blog entry “Extremist Veganism,” but I thought it wouldn’t be fair to the vegans who might read my blog. Never mind that she is an Iranian American (Persian), or vegan, or animal rights activist, or whatever nonsense she could stand for – I had to write about this one because it struck an odd cord with me when I heard the news. For one, it was harrowing to know that I was just up in San Bruno visiting my friend Jay, who lives 1 block away from where the shooting happened – and I remember walking past the YouTube entrance several times during my visit. Secondly, I’m typing these words while in San Diego, and the shooter is also from San Diego. But even these 2 things are not what bothered me.

I don’t need to waste my time researching this woman’s history to know that she was a disturbed, illogical individual. The facts speak for themselves. But it seems to me that she was the product of so many elements swirling the world these days; whether it was growing up in the entitled millennial world where she thought her voice deserved to be heard and cared about to the point of attempting murder if she was censored, or if she thought her vegan/animal rights agenda was that damn important, or if the current divided state of American society further enabled her to think she could make some sort of dent or martyr-esque statement with her actions – whatever it may have been, the very fact that someone committed a terrorist act because they were simply censored on the Internet is a new and crazy thing for me to see.

I sell things online. I struggle with marketing ad copy that gets censored or taken down because it might be inappropriate, or too promotional, or too aggressive. Of course, my agenda is to drive sales, not to save the Amazon rainforest or stop whale fishing in Japan. No one will cry if my content is censored or taken down. It’s a part of my agreement in leveraging social networks that will allow me to use their platforms, which I must abide by. I get that. Notwithstanding that though, I’d like to imagine that if I had some crazy agenda I felt SO strongly about, and my pertinent content was taken down, I don’t think I’d march over to Google or Facebook and shoot up a few random employees (that probably have no knowledge or vested interest in their agenda) just to make some kind of point- most people would never do such a thing- actually this is the first time I’ve ever heard of someone crying about their content getting censored so much that they thought it was a good idea to go to YouTube and shoot people before killing themselves.

And there are plenty of extremist groups out there with content on the Internet that constantly get their stuff taken down. There are strategies on much higher, sophisticated levels that also constantly deal with eradicating it on the grand scale. However, for one person to think that she can attempt to cause lethal violence just to get her point heard – or perhaps even for revenge, well, that’s disturbing because there she’s probably not the only one with an agenda who will take her own fight to stupid, idiotic lengths.

What did Aghdam achieve with her actions? A brief stint on the news that she’ll never know about, that will fizzle with the next news cycle? People will search for her name to see why she did what she did, find out the crazy background she had, and move on with life. Nothing will have been achieved. NOTHING. Even the 4 people she shot will survive and move on. People will generally see how nutty some animal rights people can be, and be reinforced of their pre-existing opinions of how they have already been. She will have died a kamikaze of no cause or purpose. What a way to throw away a life.

Yeah, some people really wanna be heard on the Internet. For me this goes back to those entitled folks I run into from time to time. They can’t stop complaining about everything in the world around them. They always have some bone to pick with everyone. They feel like they deserve the world on a silver platter. Far be it from them to be thankful for a single thing or person in their life. It’s these folks I watch out for, especially now that I am hearing that there are actually people out there who will shoot up a place – basically just to complain about something at the end of the day.