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
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