David Firth, the creator of the cult Salad Fingers web series, saw “smartschoolboy9” in his local town when he was in school, he’s revealed.
While first emerging on Reddit earlier this year, a rather disturbing case has gone viral after YouTuber Nick Crowley released a deep-dive mini-documentary into a dark “internet rabbit hole”: the mystery of smartschoolboy9.
There’s a lot of speculation and unconfirmed details, but here’s what we know: it’s believed his name could be David Alter (although this could be a pseudonym, given the use of “Alter”); they’ve posted photos and videos of themselves dressed in tight school clothes with heeled boots; and they’ve been accused of running several Instagram accounts with unsettling, edited (and sometimes explicit) images of children.
Police are also said to be investigating the allegations – but, echoing the rest of the case, this hasn’t been confirmed either.
In the meantime, cybersleuths have been connecting any dots they can, seemingly narrowing Alter’s (or whoever he is) location to London, after being “driven out of Doncaster.”
Where does Firth come in? The Salad Fingers creator comes from Doncaster. So, a Redditor messaged him to ask if he had any recollection of a figure resembling Alter (or the “clown monkey man” as he was allegedly known by locals).
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“Yeah I think I remember him walking around town in the late ’90s or early 2000s when I was at Hall Cross school. He never approached me though,” he replied.
According to Firth, between 1999-2001 he saw a “dark-skinned guy who would wear really sloppily applied makeup… I remember him wearing a white shirt and a school tie and he had a strange posture, or walked quite leaned forwards.”
Firth didn’t have any other information, but added that the more recent photos of Alter looked like the same person he saw in the late ’90s.
TikTokers have also been creating smartschoolboy9 ‘fan art’ and replicating his alleged accounts, something that’s been thoroughly discouraged by those familiar with the case.
Make sure you check out our rundown of new true crime documentaries on streaming this month, and read our guides on the Laci Peterson case and the Menendez brothers before Monster Season 2.
