OLYMPIA, WA—Citing a need to stand out from the crowd and further his brand, local serial killer Peter Guiles told reporters Tuesday that he has been working on several new and exciting social media strategies as a means to promote himself and his future slayings.
“Given the sheer amount of digital ‘noise’ that internet users are bombarded with every day, I really have to think creatively about the ways in which I market my work and my identity socially so as to generate the maximum amount of buzz,” said Guiles, 43, who has killed nine women in the Pacific Northwest area dating back to 2011. “The genius of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, of course, is their instant reach, but the key is really knowing how best to tap into that reach without oversaturating yourself.”
“Like, I could tweet threats and clues as to my next victim all day long, but it might not have the same sharability of one great twitpic of me cutting out some woman’s spleen,” Guiles continued. “You see what I mean? It’s all about having an original voice.”
Saying that “the name of the game is networking without seeming like you’re networking,” Guiles confirmed to reporters that he has already developed a number of strategies he hopes will dramatically bolster his digital brand, including Instagramming photos of cleavers and attempting to start a Twitter conversation with actress Anna Kendrick in which he informs her he just killed and ate a woman whole.
While acknowledging that serial killing was a crowded field, with “everybody trying to be the next Berkowitz or Bundy,” Guiles stated that he believes his embrace of new technologies and his willingness to do whatever it takes to “put himself out there” will ultimately set him apart from other deranged murderers in the area where it counts most: digital.
“The reality is, it’s 2013 and I can’t expect my murders to get the engagement they deserve by relying on the same old avenues for promotion—anonymous letters to newspapers, severed toes sent to local police stations, that kinda thing,” Guiles told reporters. “And look, I admit, I can be a little shy about self-promotion. It’s not in my nature, really. But if you truly care about slaughtering humans and you want to share your work with as many people as possible, then you just gotta push past that hesitation.”
“Thankfully, I already have a fairly established brand to build off of,” Guiles said, referring to his tendency to remove his victims’ fingers before he has sex with them. “So that helps.”
After explaining to reporters that he does make an effort to “switch off” from time to time, especially when he’s spending time with one of his victims, Guiles confirmed that staying active and relevant on social media was, in a sense, a full-time job, one that requires constant care as well as a strong sense of whatever the latest cultural trends and directions might be.
“In this day and age, you have to be constantly on the cutting edge and working all the angles or people are simply going to stop caring—that’s the cold, hard truth of it,” Guiles said, adding that the time it takes for one grisly mutilation and stabbing to disappear from the Twittersphere is mere minutes. “And that’s why you always have to be an early adopter of new platforms. Just think: All it takes is six seconds for me to snap a person’s neck. What else takes six seconds? A Vine.”
“So, you see, it’s all about leveraging new media, really,” Guiles added to reporters, before producing a paring knife, lopping off his own genitals, and posting a picture of it to his Flickr stream.
At press time, Guiles had checked himself and local woman Jennifer Vaughan into Capitol State Forest on Foursquare.