YouTube has had its fair share of horror stories. L-R: Nasim Aghdam, Greg Chism of Toy Freaks, Monalisa Perez.
YouTube has had its fair share of horror stories. L-R: Nasim Aghdam, Greg Chism of Toy Freaks, Monalisa Perez.
As it emerges the California shooter who opened fire at the YouTube headquarters was a frustrated vlogger, the Daily Mail explores some of the biggest scandals that have rocked the world of aspiring YouTubers.
For every millionaire PewDiePie or Logan Paul, there are a thousand frustrated YouTubers desperately trying to get more views.
And sometimes that can result in aspiring vloggers pushing themselves to make increasingly outrageous, and sometimes disturbing, videos.
This image taken from video from KGO-TV shows people walk away from the YouTube headquarters after the shooting. Photo / Supplied
Some of those videos have resulted in furious backlash and even criminal charges against the posters, the Daily Mail reported.
Last month, a 20-year-old mother from Minnesota was sentenced to six months in jail for fatally shooting her boyfriend during a botched YouTube stunt last year.
Monalisa Perez, who was pregnant at the time with her second child, was arrested in June 2017 after shooting her boyfriend, 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz III, in the chest for a YouTube video. She had their son in September.
They had set up the stunt, so Perez fired a bullet from a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol into an encyclopedia Ruiz held it against his body.
But the projectile penetrated the volume and fatally wounded the young father.
"We were doing a YouTube video and it went wrong. Please hurry up," Perez told the 911 dispatcher in June 2017 after the shooting went wrong.
Prior to the shooting, Perez had tweeted: "Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. HIS idea not MINE".
The couple's YouTube channel had 218 subscribers at the time and included pranks like Perez feeding Ruiz donuts covered in baby powder.
The fatal shooting was captured on two cameras that had been set up to record the stunt. Police said they do not plan to release the footage.
The court ordered that Perez cannot "make any financial compensation" from the recording of Ruiz's death, according to the Star Tribune. She is also banned from ever possessing firearms.
Child abuse has been another issue on the site.
Last month, 20-year-old Monalisa Perez was jailed for shooting her boyfriend, 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz III, in the chest for a YouTube video, killing him. Photo / Supplied
Mike Martin, who ran the popular YouTube channel DaddyoFive, which had 760,000 subscribers, lost custody of his children after posting multiple clips of him "pranking" his two young kids.
The videos often showed father Martin "pranking" his youngest child, Cody, in a series of incidents that many in the YouTube community have been calling abusive for several months.
Cody, 9, was the most 'pranked' member of the family, often being screamed at and swore at, and he would frequently end up in tears or throwing things. Photo / Supplied
Videos include Martin convincing Cody he had been adopted out to another family, pushing him and bloodying his nose (Martin claimed the blood was fake), smashing Cody's X-box with a hammer, accusing Cody of spraying his room with ink when he didn't and yelling and swearing at him.
Often Cody ended up red faced, crying, screaming, or throwing things out of frustration. In one video, Cody threatens to kill himself. "I hate my life just kill me," he cries after his father harangues him.
Mike Martin, who ran the popular YouTube channel DaddyOFive lost custody of his children after posting multiple clips of him 'pranking' his two young kids. Photo / Supplied
The couple made approximately US$200,000 to US$350,000 annually from the channel, according to New York Magazine.
The videos sparked outrage and an online petition to get CPS to investigate the family. As the backlash mounted though, the family was forced to post a statement of apology on their Facebook.
"We deeply apologize for your feelings of concern. We DO NOT condone child abuse in any way, shape or form," the statement read. And in May last year, Rose Hall, the biological mother of Mike Martin's two youngest children, Cody, nine, and Emma, 12, was granted custody of the kids.
The "Ted" channel also came under fire in December after it uploaded videos of his children handling a diaper covered in fake faeces, being "scared" by clowns and mock-wrestling.
Three of Ted's videos were deemed unsuitable, one was age-restricted and one was deleted. The advertising on his channel has since been removed by YouTube.
The Toy Freaks YouTube channel, founded by landscaper Greg Chism of Granite City, Illinois, which had 8.53 million subscribers showed young girls in unusual situations that often involved gross-out food play and simulated vomiting.
The wildly popular Toy Freaks channel (pictured) featuring a single dad and his two daughters was also making up to $1.5 million per month before it was deleted in November. Photo / Supplied
The channel invented the "bad baby" genre, and some videos showed the girls pretending to urinate on each other or fishing pacifiers out of the toilet.
The channel had had its videos pulled as part of the crack-down.
In 2015, Sam and Nia Rader, from Wills Point, Texas, made headlines when they were accused of faking a miscarriage.
In 2015, Sam and Nia Rader , from Wills Point, Texas, made headlines when they were accused of faking a miscarriage. Photo / Supplied
The couple posted a video on their family YouTube channel in which the father-of-two "surprised" his wife, 26, with the news that she was pregnant after he used urine she'd left in the toilet to do a pregnancy test.
Shortly afterward, they tearfully announced that Nia had had a miscarriage — which Sam, an ER nurse, claimed to have been able to detect.
The couple's initial miscarriage announcement was met with words of support and empathy from subscribers — but skepticism from much of the rest of the internet.
Other people drew attention to the fact that, just hours after announcing the news of their miscarriage, the couple were busy celebrating the increased number of YouTube views and subscribers the news had generated.
Shortly afterward, Daily Mail Online broke the news that Sam had signed up for an account on the adultery website Ashley Madison, and he was then kicked out of the Vlogger Fair conference after getting physical with another vlogger in attendance.
After being accused of "faking" the miscarriage for social media, the couple briefly retreated from the limelight.
Aghdam was an animal rights activist. Photo / Supplied
California shooter Nasim Aghdam, 38, was an established YouTuber posting militant Vegan videos, bizarre "parody" clips, and long, angry rants about YouTube policies.
Aghdam had multiple YouTube channels, which featured videos ranging from ab workouts to what she claimed was the "first Persian TV commercial and music video regarding animal rights and veganism".
She also had an Instagram page, which Aghdam said she preferred, that featured numerous graphic images of animals being mistreated.
The videos were often edgy or confronting. Photo / Supplied
Aghdam seemed fixated on the belief that her YouTube views were sinking, posting screen grabs that showed her views had dropped by more than half in nine months.
Aghdam, who identified as Persian, posted videos in both English and Farsi and claimed her latter channel was being filtered by 'close-minded YouTube employees'.
On Tuesday, that fury boiled over and Aghdam shot a man and two women with a handgun when she stormed YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno.
Witnesses say Aghdam was wearing glasses and a scarf when she managed to walk onto the YouTube campus and open fire on employees in what police believe is a random shooting.
Law enforcement officials had initially said the shooting was being investigated as a domestic dispute after early indications suggested she had shot her boyfriend.
She had been missing for two days and Aghdam's father warned police that she could be headed for YouTube because she 'hated' the company. Photo / Supplied
Her father Ismail Aghdam said she had told family members that YouTube had stopped paying her for content she posted on the site. YouTube video creators can earn money from advertisements, but for various reasons the firm sometimes 'de-monetizes' channels meaning clips don't run with adverts.
He told the Bay Area News Group that he had warned police his daughter hated YouTube and she might be headed to their headquarters.
He had reported her missing from Southern California on Monday morning after she went two days without answering her phone. Ismail said police contacted him at about 2am on Tuesday to say they had found her sleeping in her car roughly 470 miles from her home town.
Ismail said police told him that everything was 'in control' but he told them she had spoken of her hatred of YouTube in recent weeks.
Vegan bodybuilder, singer, athlete, artist, and director are just some of the words that Nasim Aghdan used to describe herself. But on Tuesday only one phrase was being used to describe the 39-year-old San Diego woman: YouTube shooter.
Aghdam has been identified as the suspect who opened fire outside of the company's headquarters in San Bruno, injuring three people before killing herself.
Aghdam complained about revenue from her YouTube posts.
In the hours after the shooting Aghdam's bizarre online presence has unfurled, revealing an obsession with YouTube's policies and her channel views.
One grab from January 15, 2016 shows Aghdam had received 182,776 views while another grab from October 14 that year showed her video had received 94,617 views.
Aghdam, who identified as Persian, posted videos in both English and Farsi and claimed her latter channel was being filtered by 'close-minded YouTube employees'.
The YouTuber's videos were quirky. Photo / Supplied
She claimed one video, which showed her doing ab exercises, was 'age-restricted' in an attempt to 'reduce views and suppress and discourage' her from making videos.
Aghdam, who referred to herself as a 'vegan bodybuilder', also frequently posted about animal rights and even held a funeral for her rabbit.
She also posted videos of animal abuse, including a dog being boiled alive, as well as pictures of herself in evening gowns posing in front of fake painted backgrounds.
