Smartschoolboy9 Is Social Media's Latest Boogeyman and Boy Is He Creepy — Is He Real?

Certain corners of social media can best be described as digital campfires. Users gather in a virtual circle to tell spooky stories that delight and possibly frighten those who read them. Eventually, these types of tall terrifying tales became known as creepypasta, which was first used on 4chan. One of the earliest horror legends to make the rounds was Ted the Caver, who originally popped up on an Angelfire website in 2001.

The thing about a creepypasta is, it's fake. What happens when the boogeyman is less a horrifying legend and more a real-life creep? By all accounts, Instagram user smartschoolboy9 might be one of those weirdos who has shifted from fiction to fact. Is smartschoolboy9 real? Sadly, he is and is far more upsetting than you could ever imagine.

A documentary by YouTuber Nick Crowley has thankfully broken down the upsetting smartschoolboy9 saga. Here's your warning: This is not OK. It all began in October 2021 when the @truth_sticks_11 Instagram profile posted a video about another account. In it, they accused the account owner of being a man secretly posing as a child. This would become a common theme for @truth_sticks_11, until it wasn't.

According to its bio, @truth_sticks_11 was run by a woman and her 12-year-old son. Eventually, she began posting pictures of a boy, which started out fairly normal then grew increasingly bizarre. The photos of her son were heavily edited to make his face ghostly white and lips comically large and red. Soon they were mostly cartoonish and included rambling stories about how much the boy loved school. It spun wildly out of control as the boy's face was photoshopped onto "scantily-clad women."

Reddit sleuths soon learned that the person running @truth_sticks_11 was also behind another Instagram with the user name @girl.chloe12. It was similar to @truth_sticks_11 in that they also posted about the "dangers of online predators." The images and writing styles were almost exactly the same as the posts on @truth_sticks_11. The main thing they both had in common was a fascination with "black-heeled mini boots." They featured heavily in posts on both accounts either in writing or drawings.

A third account with the username @smartschoolboy9 was discovered, and it was far worse than the other two. Instead of using AI or manipulating stolen images of children, @smartschoolboy9 was run by an adult man who dressed like a young boy in a school uniform, including white makeup, full red lips, and ankle boots. He would make videos where he spoke in a high-pitched voice and occasionally stuck his tongue out in sexually suggestive ways. Smartschoolboy9 also engaged in predatory behavior by commenting on profiles of other children.

When it became clear that @smartschoolboy9 could be a danger to children, web sleuths set out to uncover his identity. He posted enough context clues to narrow his location down to London. In his posts, @smartschoolboy9 frequently referred to someone named David and it didn't take long for these citizen detectives to land on the name of David Alter, age 59.

Since he was exposed, Alter responds to DMs and calls the folks messaging him "perverts and predators." This is a tactic he utilizes often, which Crowley describes as projection. Alter also comments on his other accounts, ridiculing, well, himself. He does this often. It's possible he's doing this in order to establish himself as a safe person. That's hard to believe as he's still uploading pictures of school and on occasion, real kids. Evidently, Alter is being investigated by local authorities, though no arrests have been made.