The wide use of the Internet has highlighted that thousands of people harbor sexualized cannibalistic fantasies. Discussion forums and user groups exist for the exchange of pictures and stories of such fantasies, a good example of which is provided by the works of Dolcett. Typically, people in such forums fantasize about eating or being eaten by members of their sexually preferred gender. The cannibalism fetish or paraphilia is one of the most extreme sexual fetishes. Very rarely do such fetishes leave the realm of fantasies, most being satisfied with pornographic stories, fetish art or photo modification (or completely computer generated images), with some enacting their fantasies in sexual roleplaying.
There have however been extreme cases of real life sexualized cannibalism, such as those of the serial killers Albert Fish, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Sascha Spesiwtsew, Fritz Haarmann ("the Butcher of Hannover"), and Andrei Chikatilo.
Another well-known case involved a Japanese student of English literature, Issei Sagawa, who grew fond of Renée Hartevelt, a 25-year-old Dutch woman he met while studying at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris in 1981. He eventually murdered and ate her, writing a graphic yet poignant description of the act. Declared unfit to stand trial in France, his wealthy father had him extradited back to Japan where he eventually regained his freedom. The way he reveled in what he did made him a national celebrity, and he has written several bestselling novels and continues to write a nationally syndicated column. The story inspired the 1981 Stranglers song "La Folie" and the 1983 Rolling Stones song "Too Much Blood".
In December 2002, a highly unusual case was uncovered in the town of Rotenburg in Hesse, Germany. In 2001 Armin Meiwes, a 41-year-old computer administrator, had posted messages like his more recent ones in Internet newsgroups on the subject of cannibalism, repeatedly looking for "a young Boy, between 18 and 25 y/o" to butcher. At least one of his requests was successful: Jürgen Brandes, another computer administrator, offered himself to be slaughtered. The two men agreed on a meeting. Jürgen Brandes was, with his consent, killed and partially eaten by Meiwes, who, as a result, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail for manslaughter (Totschlag, second-degree murder). In April 2005, the German Federal Court of Justice ordered a retrial upon appeal of the prosecution, and in May 2006 Meiwes was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The band Rammstein took up this case in the song Mein Teil.
This was not the first consensual killing mediated through the Internet, but it is the first such known case of consensual cannibalism.
