Armin Meiwes, a computer technician in central Germany, liked to meet other men online. But instead of using Match.com or Friendster, he posted his personal ads on sites like “Cannibal Cafe,” “Guy Cannibals” and “Torturenet.” And instead of dinner and a movie, he preferred to slaughter and eat his dates.
Unlike other cannibals, Meiwes used the Internet to meet his (very willing) victims. So I went looking for his original message board postings, but the three sites he mentioned in his testimony have shut down in the year since his arrest. He also posted messages to a Usenet group called alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism, where several of his posts are archived by Google Groups.
The newsgroup, like many others, is so overwhelmed with spam that the active users started prefixing their posts with “ASSC” to separate out the noise. If you look around, you’ll find an active community of cannibal fetishists, with their own forms of fan fiction, creative writing, poetry, and the occasional “stab” at humor. Compared to this kind of creative output, Armin Meiwes’ posts are downright dull.
December 18, 2003: PETA is trying to convert him to vegetarianism.
