It's about money: vegan suicide shooter attacks youtube HQ.
05 April 2018 [link youtube]
A vegan, Iranian, Bahai youtuber (and animal rights activist) recently engaged in a shooting spree at Youtube headquarters, concluding with her own suicide. However, this was not "a vegan protest", nor an act of "vegan terrorism": her grievance was, fundamentally, about money.
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/news/youtube-shooters-bizarre-videos-key-to-suspected-motive-199261/
And yeah, implicit in the discussion of finances in this very video, is this: I have 9,000 subscribers on Youtube, and maybe 400 twitter followers, but only 130 donors (paying $1 each, monthly) supporting the channel on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel/posts
Youtube Automatic Transcription
- yen of course I condemn someone going
on a you know terroristic suicidal gun rampage it's very easy for me to condemn however I do think the necessary next step is to point out this killing spree that's attempted killing spree this suicidal killing spree was not about veganism this is someone who happened to be a vegan youtuber and vegan activist her fundamental grievance was about money to quote the little-known rapper 50 cent it usually goes down over money and [ __ ] guess what people this video is gonna talk about YouTube it's gonna talk about vegan activism it's gonna talk about the psychology of vegan activist it's gonna talk about a shooting that recently grabbed headlines but it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that in the end the motivation and the moral issue we have to talk about is money and badness yen so I got a bunch of emails like this one from supporters on patreon and fans the channel who have other ways to contact me quote looking forward to your response regarding the YouTube shooter and the media is reporting the event I've only seen three responses from vegan youtubers thus far and they all have been quick to deflect blame from this woman advocating on behalf of veganism now look I'm surprised that so many people wrote to me wanting my opinion on this it seems like the opinion he wants to hear from me is that you know acts of suicidal terrorism are bad now I can provide that service I can tell you exactly what you want to hear yes I am of the opinion that that acts of suicidal terrorism were bad I uh you know I would say that many of these other youtubers the ones listed here and others you know known and unknown to me they're probably not coming out and making a statement on that just because it's so obvious that it seems needless or gauche you know I took a hard stand against violence when it was being preached by Gary Yourofsky and at that time Gary Yourofsky was one of the most influential and charismatic leaders in the vegan movement so that was a hard position to take some people hated before de Ghent and I showed clips of him talking about and endorsing violence and I said look guys we all need to wake up and oppose this kind of activism whether or not it actually is violent in itself or whether or not people actually take inspiration from this and engage in acts of violent terrorism you know we need to really come out in a strong clear position opposed to this this kind of violence both many years ago and more recently I've spoken out against the you know very heat theoretical and hypothetical violence of a person like vegan gains is an actual violence I mean he's not actually doing anything violent but where he is you know threatening people on camera and pointing guns at the camera and sometimes getting out knives on camera while saying threatening things I said no we got to draw a lot against this but in those circumstances it does seem like there's some function for myself as a commentator in the digital demi-monde the vegan activism to take position on this there's a point in me also criticizing groups like the right to action everywhere peda on and on the list goes but I have to say with something like this I think many people are not going to condemn it just because it does seem so obvious that nobody wants to take a stand take a moral stand put their foot down and say hey guess what you know shooting others , shooting yourself as bad this kind of act of suicide terrorism is a terrible thing for veganism and it's also a terrible way to protest you know the injustice of how YouTube does business which is I think hear very clearly the real issue to be addressed this wasn't a vegan protest this was a protest against the business practices of YouTube corporation so as I said the intro it's about my usual however vegan spokespersons should first and foremost condemn the actress under these three did the woman shot up YouTube because the medium was interfering with her ability to spread the vegan message I'll come back to that I think that's not really the issue having looked at her own website and every little coverage in some respects we as vegans are culpable and should self police to a greater extent well I wouldn't put it that way no but several people have come forward and made the claim that there's no meaningful connection between this act of violence and veganism political psychological otherwise and I wouldn't agree with that either what is the connection why does this matter for veganism what's veganism have to do with it look a lot of people involved in veganism care about justice and I've heard many vegans passionately claim that we should make the case for the future of the vegan movement entirely on the basis of a kind of justice often they want to articulate it in terms of a slave rebellion a slave uprisings justice in lashing out for vengeance against the slave owners I mean really this is one school of thought within vegan political discourse and I I disagree with that approach root and branch like I disagree with it in theory I just you're with it in principle I disagree with in terms of the rhetoric I also disagree with it in practice and most of those people want to talk to them face-to-face or via Skype or by email as soon as I start talking a bit they haven't actually studied the history of slave rebellions and slave liberation movements and so on but the sense of justice and injustice that that very brittle and I think I can frankly say self-righteous tendency within veganism that's that's part of what attracts a certain type of person to veganism in the first place and then once they're within the vegan movement that element of their character can kind of blossom can company can become a major part of their daily life whereas before me it was a minor or peripheral part of the of their character or life right this is this is the the behavior and the kind of moral posturing that gets rewarded in the same sense like keep in mind that I'm not really singling out veganism or veganism as a movement that means a lot to me I'm myself etcetera etcetera but you know if you knew someone in high school who kind of seemed like an average kid and then you meet him 20 years later and you know he's joined a charismatic Christian cult where every day he's preaching certain moral virtues every day let's say he's going out and warning people that you know the world is gonna end that the you know the vision published in the book of Revelation and the New Testament of the Bible this is imminently about to happen you know certain elements of his character that you might recognize when you knew him in high school have in a sense they've been exorcised people they've become a greater and greater part of what's what's manifest what's visible the type of person he is it's drawn out exaggerated and exacerbated perhaps certain characteristics yet in the in the same way for a lot of people even though they might have some of these tendencies notice some of these passions carrying about justice and injustice their involvement with the vegan movement is going to exacerbate exaggerated and exorcise some of these tendencies which may be why they got involved with vegans of the first place that's not the case for all vegans my girlfriend Melissa like myself really the first step that brought her into veganism was an interest in ecology that's true for me also I think anyone who's really thinking in a systematic and honest way about ecology is gonna step-by-step become interested in veganism but for other people I mean I know one girl here in Canada and for her it was just the shock of opening a cardboard box full of chicken you know butchered chicken ready to eat chicken from the grocery store and there were some feathers in the box seeing the feathers on the flesh of this evil chicken in the box was a moment of horrific realization for her she suddenly felt incredibly revolted by all meat and then she started asking questions there are different people who take different roads to to veganism and you know to some extent those reflect the type of characters who are signing up for veganism at this stage so yes but this issue of justice and injustice it's a very dangerous thing and it has been since Plato since Plato wrote the Republic often a book that's often given the subtitle on the meaning of justice it's a terrible book by the way Plato's Republic you have to read it but I don't recommend it unfortunately it's required reading but some terrible book look I talk to people all the time the situation of my divorce and my trying to spend quality time with my daughter my perspective on that is of doing the best I can these are the circumstances these are the laws these the rights and responsibilities is the financial constraints and the time constraints given all these factors what is the best I can do I'm trying to do something positive I look at the situation in that sense and when I talk to other people who regard it in terms of justice and injustice I notice their sense of motivation is radically different from my own they respond to it with sense of moral outrage and anger and becoming despondent and it's not even their divorce it's not even their daughter it's my situation but I feel more positively about it because I'm just looking at in terms of me doing the best I can do I'm not looking at it in terms of justice and an ethic of justice very often is a layer of shiny blue paint on top of an ethic of revenge okay so in some respects we as vegans are couple and should self lease to a greater extent for example condemning the biome entire tribes of vegan gains etc at the very least we should condemn acts of violence tied to spreading the vegan message before rationalizing our defenses what are your thoughts here by contrast is whether patreon supporters who just says laconically pedda will love this because it gets the word vegan in the headlines so I mean he's joking of course but the joke you know has teeth the joke definitely has a political punchline worth worth noting uh Nazim SABS she was successful on YouTube so let's be very clear she was not someone who was struggling to have a voice on YouTube she was not someone who was struggling to be heard rather than ignored she did have a big following she did have a big audience although that audience was primarily not english-speaking that audience was largely linked to Iran Iranian diaspora people who are in Iran itself um however she was getting hundreds of thousands of views per video so her situation psychologically politically even economically is very different from someone who's struggling to get those first five hundred regular viewers the struggle however as pointed out on her own website it very clearly was about money so she had an example of a video that had three hundred thousand views and YouTube only granted her ten cents worth of revenue now on my own channel a hit video a smash hit video generates one dollar of revenue for me right but a smash hit video my channel is maybe five thousand viewers so this month I do have one smash hit video that has already generated one u.s. dollar now I would generate more revenue I don't know how much more if my videos were not being constantly censored restricted and demonetized by YouTube right but as you've probably guessed I'm not in it for the money [ __ ] we're motivated by money everything about this channel be very different including this discussion I'm having with you now right as I say again and again I feel like on YouTube honesty is the only currency with God I'm here to give you something real I don't have any set I don't have any plot if I don't have a story to tell what I've got to share with you is my real life you know and there's a lot to talk about coming to that real life politically personally philosophically and otherwise but I'd rather come on here and do book reviews I'm Esther I'm still reading books all the time you know something real some that reflects what's going on in my life what I've been reading about thinking about I don't unknown addressed in the type of artifice that would earn more money before me on YouTube however with all that Edmund said just as a caveat very clearly if I can earn one dollar out of 5,000 views another youtuber like Nazim SABS has a very clear grounds for a grievance in that she has 300,000 views in a video and she is earning much much less than one dollar for every 5,000 views right so I have read the justifications from YouTube for why it is that their payment per view is so inconsistent and in a word prejudicial those explanations are not good enough if you're an employee at Starbucks and you know somebody else gets paid more than you to fill up a certain number of cups of coffee to work for a certain number of hours a day you have every right to ask hey why is it that he gets paid more than I do why is it that she gets paid less than I do what are the grounds of this inequality right if you have a system a structured system of content distribution like YouTube I think everyone involved in playing the game would accept it if the amount they were earning we're now lowered lower than what it is now but was fair and consistent well you could say hey all right you know what I make one dollar out of every 5,000 views and I know that someone else decides to do some other kind of content they also make $1 for every 5,000 views fair's fair right we can all play by the same rules we don't open even playing field instead what YouTube has done is to set up an unequal an uneven playing field that is constantly egregiously hurtful to all the people playing on it now look I mean I can talk about my own feelings in this it's probably people who are looking for on this channel I have heard very successful youtubers talk about their own sense of frustration that they can have a much more successful video in terms of the audience response or an artistically successful video or a video that's successful in terms of what they can see in terms their audience's appreciation of it that earns them much less money than some other video that was unsuccessful and disliked by the audience but somehow generated more revenue the sense that there is no meaningful link between the quality of their output and the quant they get paid this can be quite demoralizing even for very successful youtubers who really do pay their rent what the case study of Nazim sab shows you is that people who are down at the low end of the scale people are getting 10 cents for a video that has 300,000 views on it they also are left with a terrible sense of injustice and in this case she decided to take the layer of paint off of injustice her off of the the concept of justice and injustice and to simply pursue revenge now do I believe that is morally wrong of course I've already said in this video of course I condemn someone going on a you know terroristic suicidal gun rampage it's very easy for me to condemn however I do think the necessary next step is to point out this killing spree and it's attempted killing spree this suicidal killing spree was not about veganism this is someone who happened to be a vegan youtuber and vegan activist her fundamental grievance was about money I remember there was a case in New York of a couple of homicides linked to kebbeh claw importers of Christmas trees these are guys who cut down trees in Quebec and hold them to New York City and sell them to people so that people in New York who live in apartments and condominiums can have a real Christmas tree a living tree drag town and you know I think a lot of it these guys you know don't pay taxes you know they're it's as kind of an underground semi illegal industry and once in a while their disputes between these guys and they kill each other and the hosts remember of his interview with the local cop who said like look can you believe it people are killing each other over Christmas trees and the police officer said of course this is money involved you know anything like this it's the human heart and you know to quote 50 cent it usually goes down over money in hose I mean whether it's a love triangle a broken heart or you know it's a broken wallet these are the things that generally do drive people to homicidal act of self-destruction ablution
on a you know terroristic suicidal gun rampage it's very easy for me to condemn however I do think the necessary next step is to point out this killing spree that's attempted killing spree this suicidal killing spree was not about veganism this is someone who happened to be a vegan youtuber and vegan activist her fundamental grievance was about money to quote the little-known rapper 50 cent it usually goes down over money and [ __ ] guess what people this video is gonna talk about YouTube it's gonna talk about vegan activism it's gonna talk about the psychology of vegan activist it's gonna talk about a shooting that recently grabbed headlines but it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that in the end the motivation and the moral issue we have to talk about is money and badness yen so I got a bunch of emails like this one from supporters on patreon and fans the channel who have other ways to contact me quote looking forward to your response regarding the YouTube shooter and the media is reporting the event I've only seen three responses from vegan youtubers thus far and they all have been quick to deflect blame from this woman advocating on behalf of veganism now look I'm surprised that so many people wrote to me wanting my opinion on this it seems like the opinion he wants to hear from me is that you know acts of suicidal terrorism are bad now I can provide that service I can tell you exactly what you want to hear yes I am of the opinion that that acts of suicidal terrorism were bad I uh you know I would say that many of these other youtubers the ones listed here and others you know known and unknown to me they're probably not coming out and making a statement on that just because it's so obvious that it seems needless or gauche you know I took a hard stand against violence when it was being preached by Gary Yourofsky and at that time Gary Yourofsky was one of the most influential and charismatic leaders in the vegan movement so that was a hard position to take some people hated before de Ghent and I showed clips of him talking about and endorsing violence and I said look guys we all need to wake up and oppose this kind of activism whether or not it actually is violent in itself or whether or not people actually take inspiration from this and engage in acts of violent terrorism you know we need to really come out in a strong clear position opposed to this this kind of violence both many years ago and more recently I've spoken out against the you know very heat theoretical and hypothetical violence of a person like vegan gains is an actual violence I mean he's not actually doing anything violent but where he is you know threatening people on camera and pointing guns at the camera and sometimes getting out knives on camera while saying threatening things I said no we got to draw a lot against this but in those circumstances it does seem like there's some function for myself as a commentator in the digital demi-monde the vegan activism to take position on this there's a point in me also criticizing groups like the right to action everywhere peda on and on the list goes but I have to say with something like this I think many people are not going to condemn it just because it does seem so obvious that nobody wants to take a stand take a moral stand put their foot down and say hey guess what you know shooting others , shooting yourself as bad this kind of act of suicide terrorism is a terrible thing for veganism and it's also a terrible way to protest you know the injustice of how YouTube does business which is I think hear very clearly the real issue to be addressed this wasn't a vegan protest this was a protest against the business practices of YouTube corporation so as I said the intro it's about my usual however vegan spokespersons should first and foremost condemn the actress under these three did the woman shot up YouTube because the medium was interfering with her ability to spread the vegan message I'll come back to that I think that's not really the issue having looked at her own website and every little coverage in some respects we as vegans are culpable and should self police to a greater extent well I wouldn't put it that way no but several people have come forward and made the claim that there's no meaningful connection between this act of violence and veganism political psychological otherwise and I wouldn't agree with that either what is the connection why does this matter for veganism what's veganism have to do with it look a lot of people involved in veganism care about justice and I've heard many vegans passionately claim that we should make the case for the future of the vegan movement entirely on the basis of a kind of justice often they want to articulate it in terms of a slave rebellion a slave uprisings justice in lashing out for vengeance against the slave owners I mean really this is one school of thought within vegan political discourse and I I disagree with that approach root and branch like I disagree with it in theory I just you're with it in principle I disagree with in terms of the rhetoric I also disagree with it in practice and most of those people want to talk to them face-to-face or via Skype or by email as soon as I start talking a bit they haven't actually studied the history of slave rebellions and slave liberation movements and so on but the sense of justice and injustice that that very brittle and I think I can frankly say self-righteous tendency within veganism that's that's part of what attracts a certain type of person to veganism in the first place and then once they're within the vegan movement that element of their character can kind of blossom can company can become a major part of their daily life whereas before me it was a minor or peripheral part of the of their character or life right this is this is the the behavior and the kind of moral posturing that gets rewarded in the same sense like keep in mind that I'm not really singling out veganism or veganism as a movement that means a lot to me I'm myself etcetera etcetera but you know if you knew someone in high school who kind of seemed like an average kid and then you meet him 20 years later and you know he's joined a charismatic Christian cult where every day he's preaching certain moral virtues every day let's say he's going out and warning people that you know the world is gonna end that the you know the vision published in the book of Revelation and the New Testament of the Bible this is imminently about to happen you know certain elements of his character that you might recognize when you knew him in high school have in a sense they've been exorcised people they've become a greater and greater part of what's what's manifest what's visible the type of person he is it's drawn out exaggerated and exacerbated perhaps certain characteristics yet in the in the same way for a lot of people even though they might have some of these tendencies notice some of these passions carrying about justice and injustice their involvement with the vegan movement is going to exacerbate exaggerated and exorcise some of these tendencies which may be why they got involved with vegans of the first place that's not the case for all vegans my girlfriend Melissa like myself really the first step that brought her into veganism was an interest in ecology that's true for me also I think anyone who's really thinking in a systematic and honest way about ecology is gonna step-by-step become interested in veganism but for other people I mean I know one girl here in Canada and for her it was just the shock of opening a cardboard box full of chicken you know butchered chicken ready to eat chicken from the grocery store and there were some feathers in the box seeing the feathers on the flesh of this evil chicken in the box was a moment of horrific realization for her she suddenly felt incredibly revolted by all meat and then she started asking questions there are different people who take different roads to to veganism and you know to some extent those reflect the type of characters who are signing up for veganism at this stage so yes but this issue of justice and injustice it's a very dangerous thing and it has been since Plato since Plato wrote the Republic often a book that's often given the subtitle on the meaning of justice it's a terrible book by the way Plato's Republic you have to read it but I don't recommend it unfortunately it's required reading but some terrible book look I talk to people all the time the situation of my divorce and my trying to spend quality time with my daughter my perspective on that is of doing the best I can these are the circumstances these are the laws these the rights and responsibilities is the financial constraints and the time constraints given all these factors what is the best I can do I'm trying to do something positive I look at the situation in that sense and when I talk to other people who regard it in terms of justice and injustice I notice their sense of motivation is radically different from my own they respond to it with sense of moral outrage and anger and becoming despondent and it's not even their divorce it's not even their daughter it's my situation but I feel more positively about it because I'm just looking at in terms of me doing the best I can do I'm not looking at it in terms of justice and an ethic of justice very often is a layer of shiny blue paint on top of an ethic of revenge okay so in some respects we as vegans are couple and should self lease to a greater extent for example condemning the biome entire tribes of vegan gains etc at the very least we should condemn acts of violence tied to spreading the vegan message before rationalizing our defenses what are your thoughts here by contrast is whether patreon supporters who just says laconically pedda will love this because it gets the word vegan in the headlines so I mean he's joking of course but the joke you know has teeth the joke definitely has a political punchline worth worth noting uh Nazim SABS she was successful on YouTube so let's be very clear she was not someone who was struggling to have a voice on YouTube she was not someone who was struggling to be heard rather than ignored she did have a big following she did have a big audience although that audience was primarily not english-speaking that audience was largely linked to Iran Iranian diaspora people who are in Iran itself um however she was getting hundreds of thousands of views per video so her situation psychologically politically even economically is very different from someone who's struggling to get those first five hundred regular viewers the struggle however as pointed out on her own website it very clearly was about money so she had an example of a video that had three hundred thousand views and YouTube only granted her ten cents worth of revenue now on my own channel a hit video a smash hit video generates one dollar of revenue for me right but a smash hit video my channel is maybe five thousand viewers so this month I do have one smash hit video that has already generated one u.s. dollar now I would generate more revenue I don't know how much more if my videos were not being constantly censored restricted and demonetized by YouTube right but as you've probably guessed I'm not in it for the money [ __ ] we're motivated by money everything about this channel be very different including this discussion I'm having with you now right as I say again and again I feel like on YouTube honesty is the only currency with God I'm here to give you something real I don't have any set I don't have any plot if I don't have a story to tell what I've got to share with you is my real life you know and there's a lot to talk about coming to that real life politically personally philosophically and otherwise but I'd rather come on here and do book reviews I'm Esther I'm still reading books all the time you know something real some that reflects what's going on in my life what I've been reading about thinking about I don't unknown addressed in the type of artifice that would earn more money before me on YouTube however with all that Edmund said just as a caveat very clearly if I can earn one dollar out of 5,000 views another youtuber like Nazim SABS has a very clear grounds for a grievance in that she has 300,000 views in a video and she is earning much much less than one dollar for every 5,000 views right so I have read the justifications from YouTube for why it is that their payment per view is so inconsistent and in a word prejudicial those explanations are not good enough if you're an employee at Starbucks and you know somebody else gets paid more than you to fill up a certain number of cups of coffee to work for a certain number of hours a day you have every right to ask hey why is it that he gets paid more than I do why is it that she gets paid less than I do what are the grounds of this inequality right if you have a system a structured system of content distribution like YouTube I think everyone involved in playing the game would accept it if the amount they were earning we're now lowered lower than what it is now but was fair and consistent well you could say hey all right you know what I make one dollar out of every 5,000 views and I know that someone else decides to do some other kind of content they also make $1 for every 5,000 views fair's fair right we can all play by the same rules we don't open even playing field instead what YouTube has done is to set up an unequal an uneven playing field that is constantly egregiously hurtful to all the people playing on it now look I mean I can talk about my own feelings in this it's probably people who are looking for on this channel I have heard very successful youtubers talk about their own sense of frustration that they can have a much more successful video in terms of the audience response or an artistically successful video or a video that's successful in terms of what they can see in terms their audience's appreciation of it that earns them much less money than some other video that was unsuccessful and disliked by the audience but somehow generated more revenue the sense that there is no meaningful link between the quality of their output and the quant they get paid this can be quite demoralizing even for very successful youtubers who really do pay their rent what the case study of Nazim sab shows you is that people who are down at the low end of the scale people are getting 10 cents for a video that has 300,000 views on it they also are left with a terrible sense of injustice and in this case she decided to take the layer of paint off of injustice her off of the the concept of justice and injustice and to simply pursue revenge now do I believe that is morally wrong of course I've already said in this video of course I condemn someone going on a you know terroristic suicidal gun rampage it's very easy for me to condemn however I do think the necessary next step is to point out this killing spree and it's attempted killing spree this suicidal killing spree was not about veganism this is someone who happened to be a vegan youtuber and vegan activist her fundamental grievance was about money I remember there was a case in New York of a couple of homicides linked to kebbeh claw importers of Christmas trees these are guys who cut down trees in Quebec and hold them to New York City and sell them to people so that people in New York who live in apartments and condominiums can have a real Christmas tree a living tree drag town and you know I think a lot of it these guys you know don't pay taxes you know they're it's as kind of an underground semi illegal industry and once in a while their disputes between these guys and they kill each other and the hosts remember of his interview with the local cop who said like look can you believe it people are killing each other over Christmas trees and the police officer said of course this is money involved you know anything like this it's the human heart and you know to quote 50 cent it usually goes down over money in hose I mean whether it's a love triangle a broken heart or you know it's a broken wallet these are the things that generally do drive people to homicidal act of self-destruction ablution