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Feeders - Matt Serafini (book recommendation) · Midnight Movie Theatre

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When a video depicting the brutal murder of a former
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: classmate leaks online, Kylie Bennington's curiosity gets the better of her,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: leading to the discovery of an off the grid social
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: media app called Monolife. Given that Kyllie's dreams of becoming
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a successful influencer remain frustratingly elusive, this mystery app seems
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: like just a ticket for online superstardom, But as it
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: turns out, there are certain cryptic rules and the user
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: agreement that must be adhered to, such as interacting with
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: other users at least twice daily or risk losing it all,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and never ever speaking of Monolife's existence to non users
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: or risk dire consequences, for this is a platform that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: primarily rewards the worst and human behavior, in which begins
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: chipping away at Kylie's sanity across post after post for
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: an ever increasing audience of immoral fans. Now, Kylie's going
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to find out just how far she's willing to go
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: on her unyielding rise to the top, even if that
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: means coming face to face with the frightening and ruthless
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: forces behind Monolife. See All from Deep within the Shadows.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: This movie or. This book came out in twenty twenty five.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It's by Matt Sarafini. I had it recommended to me
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: through a Stephen King podcast called The Loser's Club. They
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: do a monthly book recommendation, and I wanted to check
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: something out that was newer. This sounded interesting enough, and
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: after reading it, I would strongly recommend it for any
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: horror fans, any anybody that's into horror books and stuff
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: like that, I would say, you'll probably find you'll probably
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: enjoy this quite a bit. I wasn't really sure if
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I was going to be into this too much, like
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: enough to finish it when I first started, mostly because
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: of how much it focuses on social media, and just
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: kind of like these two friends who are competing to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: be the most popular on social media. Her friend Aaron
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: is super popular on Instagram, and Kylie's always trying to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: catch up with her, but she's not as good at
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Instagram as her friend Aaron is. So that right away
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I was kind of like, all right, I don't know
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: how far this will go for me. I don't know
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: how much I could get into a book that's about
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: social media, because I assumed it was going to be
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that social media is bad, and it's like, yeah, I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: already kind of agree with that, So if that's kind
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of the underlying theme here, then I don't know. I
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: feel like it's going to be like preaching to the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: choir type of thing. But once you really get into
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the relationship and this video leaks of one of their
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: former classmates that gets murdered, it does kind of drag
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you in right away, mostly because the characters are written
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: really well and they're really interesting characters. There's almost not
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a single likable character in this book, which can be tough,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, it almost makes it a
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: little more interesting in a way, because I was mostly
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: just interested at that point, and I'm going to try
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to not spoil too much. This should be a pretty
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: short video, but you learn pretty quickly that the character Kylie,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the main character we're following around, is a sociopath. I
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: feel like they make it pretty clear just the way
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: she describes herself and when bad things start happening in
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the book, the way she describes how she feels about it,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: it's she's either a sociopath or a psychopath. I think
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: it would be more of a sociopath because if I remember,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I think a sociopaths still kind of try to keep
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: up their public appearance, and most of their behavior is
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: based off of that. If I remember right, it's been
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a while. I remember watching a YouTube video in time
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: that was like explaining the difference between both, so you know,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: it's YouTube YouTube doctor over here, just fucking diagnos and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: bitches left and right. But as the book went on,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I started to feel like this reminded me a lot
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of American Psycho. And when I say that, I mostly
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: mean the movie. Just because I haven't read the book,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know how similar the book is to the movie.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: It's on my list of books to read. I'll get
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to it eventually, but I'm a huge fan of the movie,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and this felt a lot like that, just her personality,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: kind of the things that she worries about. There was
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: there's a point in the book where Kylie starts getting
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: so many gifts from like her social media app or whatever,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: like or products and whatnot, that she's having such a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: hard time keeping up with just the cardboard that the
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: gifts come in. And whenever she tries to tell people
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: that she's busy, like people start trying to ask her
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  Speaker 1: to do stuff with them, and like you know, her
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: old friends or whatever are like, hey, do you want
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: to do this? Do you want to go get a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: get lunch or something like that. She's like, I can't,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I'm busy, and they're like, what are you busy with?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And she she'll always reply with I have to break
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  Speaker 1: down cardboard And it just reminds me of Patrick Bateman
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: always having to return some videotapes. So I thought that
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: was really neat. And there's some other things too. I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: won't get too deep into it, but there's a scene
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: in the book that I feel like is basically a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: homage to the scene where Patrick Bateman kills Jared Leto's
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: character almost to a tea. And the other thing is
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: like the Kylie is obsessed with Katy Perry and she
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: constantly references her in her songs and describes Katy Perry's
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: works similarly to the way that Patrick e would describe
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Huey Lewis in the news, and it just it really
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: stood out to me. It just kept popping up where
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, yeah, it's like an American psycho,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of similarities there, and I
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: really enjoyed that I thought it was really it did
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: it in a really fun way. And because this is
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: such a different setting. It's modern day, it's with social media,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and it's with like a young lady I think she's
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: it's their freshman year of college, so they're probably about
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen years old, I think, is what it says.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: It just it's such a different setting that it did
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: feel fun and it did feel fresh. I really enjoyed
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: that about the book. If you like the movie American Psycho,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: you'll probably like this. There's also some of the similarities
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: as far as almost like the how surreal the book
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: starts to get, like, you know, as you get into
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the movie American Psycho, the lines get blurred pretty quick
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: on like what's really happening and what's not, to the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: point of by the end of the movie you almost
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: find out that this isn't really even happening, or at
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: least most of this hasn't happened, if any of it.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: And there's some points like that in the book where
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I was like, is this character even really here or
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: are these things that she's seeing real or not? Because
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it gets pretty crazy with some of the some of
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the characters that are introduced in the description, it talks
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: about the ruthless forces behind mono life. When you get
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: into that, I mean, it gets fucking crazy. And by
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the end of the book everything's gone wild. It almost
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: feels like you're into a completely different world by that point.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: And I was starting to think, like, is this going
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: to end in some way where she's just had like
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: a mental break and none of this is real and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and she figures that out in some way
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: or another. I'll just leave that at that. I don't
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: want to spoil that or anything. And even though this
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: does start out as like a social media almost like
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a mean girl's feeling story, it gets pretty dark. I
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: would say, there is still like a lot of lighthearted,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: almost like dark humor in it, and it really gets
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: to the point where it starts to feel bordering on absurdity,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: where it's just so over the top. But there is
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of extreme gore in this book. Cannibalism comes
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: up quite a bit. There's basically every kind of murder
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: or torture that you can imagine described, and a lot
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: of it in pretty great detail, at least you know,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: in short sections of the book. So the book goes
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: wild it gets completely unhinged, especially towards the end. The ending,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I won't say too much about it, but if you've
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: seen the movie wax Work, the ending almost reminded me
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: of the ending of Waxwork, where it just goes completely
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: fucking off the rails. There's like all sorts of crazy
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: shit involved with it. There's like ancient monsters, which is
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: were wolves, all sorts of crazy fucking shit going on
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: towards the end, and it's another one of those things
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: where you start thinking, like, is any of this actually real?
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: The good thing is that the book does pick a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: side and stick with it at a certain point, and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that choice. It's one of those stories
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: where I feel like I would have been a little
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: let down if it ended it on like an ambiguous no.
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  Speaker 1: But no, I thought it was great. And the social
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: media stuff, I mean, it does hammer a lot of
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: the points home that you would expect about like parasocial relationships.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You know, Kylie's very envious of her friend. She's constantly,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: like almost talking to herself about how jealous she is
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and how she just can't come to terms with the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: fact that she can't catch up to her friend. Aaron
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: on her Instagram success. Also, like, as she gets more
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: involved with this new app, Mono Life, you start to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: see how she's losing herself in the app, starting to
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: almost become like a persona that's just craving attention from strangers.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And I think there's also mentions of eating disorders and
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: self harm and stuff like that in the book. So yeah,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it touches on a lot of things I feel like
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: that are at least somewhat involved in like what you
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: would expect with a social media type of story. And
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know for sure, it might just be me,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: but it almost felt like this was pointing a little
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: more specifically at like OnlyFans. But there were a few
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: moments where I was like, Okay, this feels more specific
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: to something like OnlyFans, like when it's talking about like
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: putting certain things out there on the internet, if you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. And the last thing I'm going
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: to say about it is one question that I was
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: constantly asking myself while I was reading it, was that
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: is Kylie's depravity influenced by Monolife or has she always
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: been like this? And personally, I think it's always it
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: was always there in her I think she was always
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: this way, and just by kind of exploring some of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: these new choices in her life, she realized, like, this
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: is how I feel about this terrible thing, and you know, oh,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I have no empathy, weird, I have no sympathy for anybody.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I don't feel bad about anything that happens to anyone.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So I think she kind of like learns that about
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: herself and uses it to grow her popularity in this app.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'll check out Feeders by Matt Sarafini. I
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: found the audiobook on Spotify, so you can listen to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it there if you use Spotify. I believe it was
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: also on Audible. I tried rainting it on Libby and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I did not find it on There's not a lot
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of newer books on Libby, so you know, or obviously
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: pick up a copy of Amazon wherever the hell you
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: get your books. I'm sure you guys know how to
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: find fucking books, all right, good night,