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The misreporting of the YouTube shooter proves the ‘crazy girlfriend’ trope is alive and well

Nope, the shooter was not motivated by jealous tendencies or romantic revenge fantasies.

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Ana Valens

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Posted on Apr 4, 2018   Updated on Feb 28, 2020, 3:25 pm CST

Opinion

Yesterday afternoon, a woman opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, leaving three injured before turning the gun on herself. She was identified as Nasim Aghdam, a 39-year-old woman from San Diego with an active YouTube channel who was reportedly infuriated with the changes to the platform’s monetized content.

“Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!” she reportedly wrote on her personal website. “There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!”

But before Aghdam was identified, the internet had another theory about why she attacked YouTube’s employees: Many believed she was a staff member’s girlfriend who wanted to kill her lover. But an ongoing police investigation has since found “no evidence” Aghdam personally knew anyone at YouTube or specifically targeted an employee, so how did the theory get started?

Breaking coverage from Tuesday reveals both police and eyewitnesses initially suspected the shooter opened fire against a boyfriend, and outlets from local station KTVU to the Daily Beast to the Daily Mail all cited the claim. From there, some Twitter users quickly picked up the information as fact. Others, particularly on the far-right, used the initial reports as a rebuttal to the left’s beliefs on why most active shooters are men fueled by entitlement, toxic masculinity, and misogyny.

https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/981278558117969921

https://twitter.com/ismynameyvonne/status/981282107694739460

https://twitter.com/DBloom451/status/981290765472157696

As irresponsible as it sounds, it makes sense that so many news outlets immediately believed Aghdam went to YouTube’s headquarters to target her boyfriend. The crazy, jilted girlfriend is everywhere in mass media. Websites like BroBible warn readers about dating a “psycho girlfriend.” Publications like the Daily Mail repeatedly write sensationalist headlines on everything from emotional ex-girlfriends to a boyfriend being forced to wear his “jealous” girlfriend’s face on a T-shirt. There’s even the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, which makes light of the serious harm that women can do as abusers.

Americans are constantly told that women are just a few steps away from being unstable lovers who are prone to psychotic behavior. Back in the early 20th century, we even had a medical diagnosis for it: “female hysteria.” But digging into studies on active and mass shooter incidents suggest women just aren’t likely to grab a gun and open fire on their boyfriends in public.

Over at Mother Jones, a database listing every U.S. mass shooting from 1982 to 2018 reveals only three incidents where a woman carried out a mass shooting: The Alturas shooting, the Goleta Postal shootings, and the San Bernardino mass shooting. All three shootings had nothing to do with a scorned lover.

Meanwhile, an FBI study detailing 160 active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013 reports only six shootings where women opened fire, and among those, zero targeted a partner. All but one incident were workplace shootings, and one case, the University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting in the ’90s, was carried out by a biology professor who allegedly collaborated with her husband to send a pipe bomb to a supervisor that gave her a poor review.

https://twitter.com/blazingxmexican/status/981540818711449600

It’s obvious that women are capable of acting out the same cruel and senseless violence that men engage in during shootings. But typecasting female shooters into convenient stereotypes like the “crazy girlfriend” or the “psycho ex” does more harm than good. It suggests female shooters target innocent civilians because women are prone to violent crimes of passion against men. Rather, data from both the FBI and Mother Jones show preexisting behavioral problems and workplace issues, not ex-boyfriends, add to the profile of female active shooters.

In 2018, active shooter incidents, sadly, seem commonplace, and shootings like the YouTube headquarters incident may become the new normal. But the “crazy girlfriend” trope is as old as the sun and can lead reporters astray, causing the public to parrot baseless claims about a female shooter’s motives before a thorough investigation can begin.

The media must do due diligence on all suspects, not just men, if it wants to shine a light on why America has a problem with active shooting incidents. Anything less is doing victims a grave disservice—and harming innocent women worldwide.

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*First Published: Apr 4, 2018, 6:34 pm CDT

Ana Valens

Ana Valens is a reporter specializing in online queer communities, marginalized identities, and adult content creation. She is a former Daily Dot staff writer. Her work has appeared at Vice, Vox, Truthout, Bitch Media, Kill Screen, Rolling Stone, and the Toast. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and spends her free time developing queer adult games.

Ana Valens