Madison Salters is the author of the new book Influencers Who Kill: Real Stories of Online Fame and Fatal Consequences. Her other books include Scams & Cons, and she is also a journalist, editor, and translator.
Q: What inspired you to write Influencers Who Kill, and how
did you choose the cases to include?
A: I had always been interested in crime writing--it was the
natural nexus of a lot of different mediums I've worked in.
Journalism covered the human element; seeing stories from
both sides, trying to avoid bias, conducting ample research, interviewing
first-hand witnesses, and tracking down leads.
Translation taught me a lot about reading between the lines,
the way that language can be flexible, especially in the hands of master
manipulators.
And being the daughter of a lawyer and an investigator, I
learned many tricks of those trades and had a go-to network for questions on
legal matters or how to track difficult-to-find information.
The research editor in me was always looking for
contradictions, threads to pull, things that didn't quite add up between
tellings of a story. I'm avid about digging and digging until the information
begins to paint a clearer picture because the right questions are finally being
asked.
I was invited to write Scams & Cons, my second
book, by Ulysses Press, a few years ago. Or, not quite invited: they tried
a few writers out, heard different pitches. The book was a compilation of scam
artists and their ploys.
My pitch won the contract, and I spent the next year doing a
deep dive into the psychology of tricksters and fraudsters. Almost by accident
along the way, I ended up unearthing real stories of murder connected to some
of the con artists. Deceit, self-interest, and narcissism often go hand-in-hand
with violent crime, so maybe that was inevitable.
After Scams & Cons, the publisher reached out to me
to write Influencers Who Kill. Unlike with my second book, which really
invited me to mix it up in terms of cases and build the book as I
liked, Influencers was more of a pare-down. The publisher provided a
list of about 22 cases, and I selected eight of them, after doing initial
research on all 22.
Then, I asked if I could include a ninth case, one that I
thought wove into the greater story well--that of Yuka Takaoka, the popular
hostess who'd tried to kill a good-looking red light district worker. I had the
translation skill to do that deep dive and, I hoped, present the story of that
crime and the sub-cultures around it; host bars and the shadowy realm of
Japanese foster care; to a Western audience. That case ended up being the cover
for the book.
I believe Ulysses Press came to me for this book
because this wasn't just crime writing; it was pop culture tied with a killer
bow. My day job, as Publisher at J-Novel Club (a Kadokawa group company), puts
me in the crosshairs of anime, manga, cosplay, and convention culture daily.
I'm a big social media user, so talking about online life is like breathing for
me. It was a confluence of niche subjects I have a lot of knowledge in--with
that undercurrent of, well, murder.
Or, blissfully, attempted murder, in the couple of cases
that were thwarted. I say "blissfully" because honestly, months of
research for this book got emotionally difficult at times. You feel for all the
victims who were needlessly put through so much.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially
surprised you?
A: I research almost everything the same way. I start big. I
look at every available piece of primary and secondary source material, then by
hand on paper, start to build a timeline. I make note of "facts" as I
go. And you'll find, when you read everything, that a ton of the
"facts" contradict one another. That's really where the story is...
in those murky blind spots.
For primary sources, I used governmental documents (such as
court papers, police interrogations) and physical evidence, whereas secondary
sources were a lot of the news.
From there, because this was about influencers, I went ahead
and consumed all their social media--all of it. Then that of their
friends, too. I used the WayBackMachine in a lot of instances to find posts and
videos that were wiped from the internet--it's like an archival history. I
watched over a thousand hours of videos. I read more posts than were countable.
I unearthed dead socials--Twitter, IG, OnlyFans,
YouTube--some of the people in the book had multiple profiles, fake profiles,
some had people pretending to be them. In some cases, profiles didn't exist
anymore, so I had to get something like a photonegative of what was said via
the replies that still exist.
TikTok briefly went down during all the research due to
restrictions, and I knew that was coming, so I spent a solid week on TikTok
transcribing everything.
From there, I noted all the contradictions. The
not-quite-rightness in a lot of the stories, even from venerated sources, or
from first-hand accounts. I questioned those plot holes when I spoke with
lawyers, witnesses, and victims. I went as deep as it was possible to go, and
followed up on every thread of inquiry, until I had a balanced view on what
most likely happened, and why.
I think what most surprised me was Snow's case. Mostly
because it concerned a death that, within this decade, will no longer be
considered a criminal affair.
There's the popular idea of redemption in a lot of crime
writing--of being guilty, but due to good behavior and rehabilitation, being
let off the hook for a mistake or a moment of passion. It's different
altogether to write about a “crime” that literally won't be one
anymore in a few years. That’s where the long memory of the internet might be
at odds with our laws.
I was surprised also by a lot of elements around the case
that didn't quite make sense, and it seems maybe never will. It was the
incident with the most witnesses and the fewest people willing to speak on it.
It was the least clear-cut to me, so I was the most careful with it.
Sometimes, you get two people with very different senses of
who a third person is. Snow's lawyer really felt this was a deep tragedy; so
did the local judge. But someone who knew Snow characterized them as
remorselessly willing to taunt people into suicide. Can both be true?
Certainly. But the waters were muddiest there, and what happened left people
involved too traumatized to talk about it.
One thing I think readers don't know but will sometimes help
to remember, especially in a society saturated with crime documentaries, is
that authors have to avoid sensationalism.
There was a lot I learned that I couldn't put in the book,
across cases, due to defamation laws, which can protect perpetrators when the
truth nonetheless may have a negative consequence to their reputation. Sections
where the perpetrators are still to live life away from the mar of their
actions had to be handled with care.
Some of the most shocking revelations take some detective
work on the reader’s part, so I’m hoping readers will read between the lines a
bit-- that's part of the fun of reading true crime, doing those mental flexes
and drawing your own conclusions.
Q: What do you think the book says about the importance of influencers in today’s
world?
A: I think there were a few key takeaways.
The first is that the definition of "influencer"
is changing. It used to be a bit more niche--an expert in usually a specific
subject, with a dedicated following they could make a noticeable and immediate
impact on. Today, it's more all-inclusive, almost a "persona". It's
gone from being about blogging and diary-style and low-budget “realness” to
being heavily curated.
The impact on today's world is twofold, in the book itself:
first, that there's a sense of entitlement and desperation that comes from
being "internet famous"; having to play act a fake version of
yourself for virality, and then having to keep up with the Joneses on content
production.
What usually begins as a harmless sharing of someone's skill
or talent tends to get funneled into a cult of personality and they have to
keep juggling the plates. Viewership going down feels like personal rejection,
these days.
The other important element is the parasocial relationships
influencers create. Screen time is up, and people use screen time to connect
with friends. But as social media becomes highly marketable, advertised on, and
mapped out by an algorithm, people see their friend's posts less and less, and
influencers more and more.
The influencers become like friends; they speak right to
their audience, they request feedback, they say good morning and how are you
and even I love you. They share intimate personal details about their lives,
which makes them unlike more distant celebrities.
It's bite-sized reality TV, and that means that people are
tuning in to consume a person as a product, and they often want that product to
be their friend. So, the way a good friend might, a lot of times, fans jump to
the defense of these influencers, or don't care what they've done, because they
don't want their favorite show interrupted.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: I hope readers will find something interesting and new
for themselves, whether it's a new case they hadn't heard of before, a type of
social media they hadn't explored, a time period on socials they were less
aware of, or a sub-culture they didn't know about.
The nine stories in this book span different cultures and
time periods for social media-- a relatively short timeline in human history,
but technology and social media especially change at light speed-- so I hope
there will be engaging and surprising narratives that suit everyone's taste.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Getting some sleep! (Ever my work in progress!)
Q: Literarily, I'm working on my fourth book and my first
work of fiction right now.
In my day job as the publisher at J-Novel Club, we bring
hundreds of manga and light novels to readers worldwide. I've been the editor
on a few of our Original Light Novel series, including the grand prize winner,
Atlas. So, there's always something brewing!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just thank you so much, and I hope you'll
give Influencers Who Kill a read! It's out in paperback, eBook, and
audio. Alexa Elmy, the audiobook narrator, does a great job.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
