Matt Serafini’s Feeders delivers a contemporary horror tale that is as visually jarring as it is psychologically scarring. Framed through the hyper-addictive lens of social media, this novel dives deep into the darkest corners of influence culture and emerges with something far more horrifying than just a tech-based thriller. It’s a mirror—cracked, bleeding, and pointed straight at us.
Synopsis: A Platform Built to Consume
The story follows Kylie Bennington, a fame-obsessed teenager drawn to the digital spotlight. When a video of a classmate’s gruesome murder leaks online, she discovers MonoLife—a hidden social platform that thrives on dark content. This isn’t Instagram’s twisted cousin; it’s an entity that feeds off human depravity. The more ethically bankrupt your content, the more you rise.
What starts as an online curiosity quickly mutates into something more parasitic. MonoLife isn’t just a platform—it’s a behavioral algorithm with its own bloodlust.
Serafini crafts a premise that feels terrifyingly believable. In an age where algorithms shape identity, Feeders by Matt Serafini explores what happens when they begin to demand more than just clicks.
Kylie Bennington: Antiheroine in a Hashtag World
At the heart of this psychological horror is Kylie—a character as repulsive as she is riveting. She doesn’t stumble into villainy. She charts her path there with deliberate steps, all the while narrating her descent with the detachment of someone who views life through the lens of likes and shares.
Kylie’s Complexity:
Influencer pathology: Her desire for validation is pathological, not performative. This makes her evolution believable and heartbreaking.
Ego and erasure: As she rises in MonoLife’s ranks, her sense of self begins to splinter. Her ego inflates, but her humanity evaporates.
Narrative duality: Kylie is both unreliable narrator and tragic symptom. You want her to stop—but also can’t look away.
Few YA-leaning horror novels dare to center such a morally eroded protagonist without redemption. Serafini’s bold commitment to Kylie’s arc is chilling in its honesty.
MonoLife as Monster: A Unique Villain
While many horror stories feature external monsters, Feeders by Matt Serafini makes its antagonist algorithmic. MonoLife is never anthropomorphized. It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t warn. And it just incentivizes. And that’s far scarier.
Why MonoLife works as a villain:
Omnipresent dread: The app follows Kylie everywhere—its silence is suffocating, its rewards insidious.
Gamified immorality: View counts, rankings, and virality are the currency of cruelty.
Unclear control: Is MonoLife sentient? Possessed? A metaphor? Serafini wisely never explains, letting its ambiguity stew in readers’ minds.
This abstraction transforms MonoLife into something mythic—part technological, part psychological, part supernatural. It’s not just a tool Kylie uses; it’s one that uses her.
Structure: Four Acts of Degradation
Feeders by Matt Serafini follows a deliberate four-act structure that mirrors the lifecycle of a viral career—from obscurity to fame, corruption, and collapse. Each act is marked by a significant breach of moral boundaries.
Discovery – Kylie finds MonoLife and uploads her first morally gray content.
Ascension – Her channel explodes after she begins exploiting real-life tragedies.
Complicity – She partners with Simon for dangerous “collabs” that result in death.
Unraveling – The line between content and crime disappears, and the ending rewires the reader’s understanding of everything prior.
This architecture adds a rhythm to the book’s chaos. The plot never drags, thanks to short, punchy chapters and cliffhanger endings that mimic the dopamine loop of actual social feeds.
Themes: The Horror of the Unfiltered Self
Serafini uses horror as a scalpel to dissect deeper truths about our need to be seen, validated, and remembered. Feeders by Matt Serafini operates as both narrative and commentary.
Core Themes:
Digital identity erosion: Kylie doesn’t just lose herself—she uploads a version of her that eventually consumes the original.
Addiction to exposure: The horror lies not in being watched, but in needing to be.
Spectatorship and complicity: Readers are made voyeurs, forced to question their enjoyment of Kylie’s decline.
By the final chapter, Feeders by Matt Serafini implicates not only Kylie, but also readers, by asking: How different are you from her?
Writing Style: Slick, Searing, and Subversive
Matt Serafini writes with the urgency of someone trying to outpace the horrors he’s unleashing. His prose is immediate, cinematic, and infused with pop-cultural fluency. There’s an effortless cadence to his language that makes even the most gruesome sequences strangely addictive.
What defines Serafini’s style:
Cinematic momentum: The novel reads like a screenplay—tight scenes, rapid cuts, tense transitions.
Meme-native dialogue: The voice reflects Gen Z internet culture without sounding cringey or performative.
Lyrical brutality: Serafini knows when to lean into poetic phrasing and when to let the horror speak in blunt force.
The style enhances the horror rather than softening it. The language isn’t just a vehicle—it’s a part of the nightmare.
Strengths: Why Feeders Stands Out
While 2025 has seen its share of horror titles, Feeders by Matt Serafini breaks through the noise with a concept that’s both high-concept and brutally grounded.
What makes it a standout:
A unique antagonist: Few books turn a social media app into a psychological and metaphysical horror.
Deep character work: Kylie is unforgettable—not likable, but layered and haunting.
Relevance: With influencer culture, AI manipulation, and performative outrage in the spotlight, Feeders couldn’t be more timely.
Genre-blending: A cocktail of horror, thriller, satire, and coming-of-age noir.
It’s rare for a horror novel to feel this immediate, this prescient, and yet so timeless in its warnings.
Weaknesses: Where the Signal Falters
Even gripping horror has blind spots, and Feeders by Matt Serafini isn’t exempt. While its momentum rarely flags, the novel stumbles in a few areas:
Lack of deeper backstory: Kylie’s pre-MonoLife life is mostly surface-level. More grounding could have heightened her transformation’s impact.
Supporting cast fades: Several side characters lose dimension midway through the book—particularly Erin and Cameron.
Ethical ambiguity overload: Some readers may feel lost in the fog of moral relativism. A clearer stance from the narrative might have provided firmer thematic ground.
These flaws, however, are minor compared to the overall experience, which is as immersive as it is disturbing.
Who Should Read Feeders?
This isn’t a book for the faint of heart or for those looking for a moralistic horror story with redemption. It’s for readers who crave raw narratives that interrogate modern society with a scalpel.
Perfect for fans of:
The Circle by Dave Eggers (tech dystopia)
Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare (YA horror with teeth)
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (morally complex protagonists)
Deadstream and Cam (films exploring digital performance and horror)
Serafini has also authored Feral and Under the Blade, both visceral love letters to grindhouse horror. But with Feeders, he graduates from genre homage to genre evolution.
Conclusion: Feeders Feeds Off Us—And Wins
Matt Serafini’s Feeders is a high-wire act of horror fiction. It’s grotesque, intelligent, provocative, and disturbingly plausible. By merging contemporary anxieties with traditional genre dread, Serafini crafts a cautionary tale that doesn’t preach—it punishes.
This is horror for the era of surveillance capitalism, of influencer confessionals, and of monetized misery. It doesn’t just want to scare you. It wants to know if you’ll share it.