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Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Rupert Goodwins

Published: 28 Jul 2003 13:21 BST

Monday 21/07/2003
In one of the more extreme examples of C2C or consumer-to-consumer Internet activity, Armin M -- the German Internet cannibal -- has finally been charged with murder. He admits eating a friend, but in a unsettling echo of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe says it was all consensual. They met in an Internet cannibal chat room, naturally got talking about eating people, Armin said he could murder a square meal and matey offered to stand him lunch. This was apparently our hungry hero's four hundred and fiftieth attempt at finding someone willing to make a meal of it, which shows focus and commitment if nothing else...

Cannibal chat rooms. Of course. I've been around a bit and seen most things on the Net, but this is new on me. I decided to see if I could track one down and pop in. You never know what helpful hints you might pick up for those tricky dinner parties, or whether the Atkins diet allows you to eat anyone bigger than, say, Mini-Me.

No luck. I asked on AOL, where some wag directed me to Delia Smith's Web site, and had a hunt on IRC. Someone there recommended a group of gay chat rooms, but while the denizens there had several most interesting suggestions it didn't get me very far.

So I tried eBay. I'm not sure I quite understand what a Cannibal (Uncut) DVD is -- you couldn't possibly swallow someone whole, after all -- and while I got quite excited by a Cannibal Head Pipe, fondly imagining it to be some sort of cooking implement, it turned out to be part of a motorbike.

The moral of this tale is: don't believe the media hype, everybody. It's by no means easy to become a successful cannibal just by buying a modem.