While a large percentage of the websites on the internet are considered safe to view for
most people, there is always going to be a dark and bizarre side of the web.
And when enough people are interested in the same weird or creepy topic, they will form
groups or communities revolving around that subject.
Some of these topics are either morally wrong, harmful to others or just straight up creepy
and it's almost a surprise that they even exist in the first place but that's what we're
going to be having a look at today
The Cannibal Cafe was an online forum created in the mid 90s that catered
to a very specific fetish, either people who wanted to eat other humans or people who wanted
to be eaten by other humans.
Members would log on to the website, describe what they were looking for and wait for a response.
However most of these posts were nothing but a fantasy and were never really acted on.
That is until 2002, When Armin Meiwes, a computer technician and former user of the website,
was arrested for eating a man named Bernd Brandes.
A few months before the incident, Meiwes had posted an advertisement online stating that
he was "looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed."
Brandes responded and the two started emailing back and forth until they eventually met with
eachother on the 9th of March, 2001.
Brandes took 20 sleeping pills and the process began, starting with Meiwes amputating his penis.
After this, Meiwes killed Brandes by slitting hit throat, he then placed his body on a meathook, the
entire incident took around 4 hours and was recorded on a videocamera that was set up
prior to the incident.
For the next ten months, Armin Meiwes ate over 44 pounds of Brandes Flesh.
In December of 2002, a college student allerted authorities about the Armin Meiwes online
activity and they raided his house, finding both the body parts and the video camera.
Originally, he was sentanced to manslaughter and given a 8 year conviction because everything
had been done consensual but this was changed to life in prison when the videotape was considered
as it proved that Armin Meiwes had done this for sexual pleasure.
It's unclear as to whether or not any other crimes like this have been connected to the
Cannibal Cafe forum but it's not surprising that the site was shut down soon after this trial.
Similar forums like this have popped up in the past but none have gained the same ammount
of popularity or notoriety as The Cannibal Cafe.
My name? Armin Meives, I was born 1961. I'm computer engineer from Rotenburg, Germany.
I killed a man, slaughtered him and ate him. Since then, he is always with me.
And then we are coming into the room where Mr. Meiwes slaughtered Mr. Brandes.
When the body is to be eaten, it has to be dead. That's clear.
And Mr. Brandes put his penis on the table and Mr. Meiwes cut the penis with his knife.
While there are a lot of strange sexual fetishes out there,
most of them are at least harmless to other people or creatures.
Unfortunately that isn't always the case and a disturbing example of this is a fetish that
revolves around crushing.
This can mean somebody being aroused by another person crushing an object, a piece of food
or even an insect with there foot however there is another area of the fetish called
hard crushing that consists of killing smaller animals for sexual pleasure.
The fetish lives almost exclusivly on the internet and has various homes, from dedicated
websites to subreddits.
This activity was given much more attention when a YouTuber known as Bootsmade4crushing
was discovered.
As you can probably guess, the channel centered around the crushing fetish and at first glance
seemed innocent enough as it mostly featured him stepping on small plastic objects however
the channel got gradually weirder as he started to post videos of him crushing snails, cockroaches
and other insects.
This was bad enough but what made it worse was an alternate account that he owned called
Boots666, which was a channel dedicated to hard crushing, the videos could only be accessed
through his Tumblr account but were still viewed by numerous people and featured him
crushing frogs, kittens and other small animals.
YouTube shut down his channel quickly after discovering this but similar videos are still
online and the fetish still has a small community to it's name.
We have seen countless cases of serial killers or mass murderers being
given a lot of attention by the media and garnering a lot of interest from the general public
This can be understandable as many people have a morbid curiosity about these topics
but it can become dangerous when that curiosity turns into an obsession.
That's exactly what happened with the so called "Columbiners" of tumblr, an internet subculture
that consists of numerous blogs dedicated to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the assailants
responsible for the Colombine Massacre of 1999 in which 13 people were killed and 24
others were injured.
The case quickly became one of the most documented school shootings in history and gained widespread
interest, mostly because of the actual incident but partially because the killers documented
there plans and preparations a series of videos, recordings and journal entries.
While the "True "Crime" community on Tumblr have often blurred the line between interest
and obsession, it's there fanatical take on these 2 killers that makes them a disturbing
and frightening community.
On these blogs, user post pictures, gifs, artwork and fan fictions about the killers
and often sympathize, resonate and relate to them.
The group gained a large amount of media attention when three teenagers planned to shoot up a
Canadian mall in 2015.
Luckily, this didn't happen and two of the conspirators were arrested but James Gamble
shot and killed himself before the police arrived at his door.
It was later discovered that they had all met on Tumblr and had disturbing blogs of
there own.
Gambles blog was mostly dedicated to Nazi Imagery and the Columbine Killers, showing
the type of mind state he and his friends were in around the time they planned this attack.
While other copycat killings have occurred, it's unclear as to whether or not they followed
these blogs and many of the users on these blogs have stated that they don't condone
murder, however because of the way these killers are idolized and romanticized, it may not
be that surprising to see more copycat killers come from these pages.
The Bareback exchange was an online forum that was most active between
the years of 2007 and 2009.
It was an outlet for homosexuxal men who were HIV positive to seek out various different
partners who they could share the disease with.
Now this is obviously very strange but at least it was consensual.
However other messages on the board showed a much more disturbing trend, and this was
people who had transmitted the disease to a partner without telling them, they would then go on
to this forum to brag about it.
Because of this, the forum has a number of disturbing and concerning posts.
In one post, a user talks about a method in which he gets a condom to break every time
he's having sex, ensuring that he spreads whatever disease he's carrying.
In another post, a user talks about strengthening his strain of HIV in order to effectively spread it.
These disturbing posts are a dime a dozen and while most of the so called bare-backing
community are merely people who are interested in having sex without protection, a small
percentage of them are looking to infect unsuspecting sexual partners with various different diseases.
This particular forum has become much less active today but this activity isn't going
anywhere anytime anywhere soon.
On various different online communities, you can see posts from users confessing to there various disturbing actions
It's not that surprising that most of the communities featured on this
list have been in some way shape of form related to sexual fetishes.
Well one of the most disturbing and notorious sexual fetishes out there is Necrophilia,
which is the sexual attraction to corpses.
Although this seems like a very specific and obscure fetish, this is the internet to it's
not that surprising that communities revolving around this fetish exist.
Websites and forums for necrophiliacs are scattered across the web but the most popular
page for this activity is R/Necrophilia, a subreddit that has a number of disturbing
and bizarre posts.
While the page is much less active than it used to be, it still managed to rack up over
1000 subscribers and has an archive of posts from users talking about the fetish, with
some even admitting that they have acted on there desires and have had sex with a corpse.
The forum also includes images, videos and more confessions from users.
Users also posts requests to either allow somebody to have sex with them while they
pretend to be dead or vice versa.
This really only scratches the surface of the type of content that you can see on this
forum or on other online communities that are similar to this and it's fair to see that
that the more you look, the more disturbing this fetish becomes.