During its peak, the Cannibal Cafe Forum attracted thousands of users who were drawn to its unapologetic and unbridled discussions. The platform's users, often referred to as "Cannis," would share and engage with content that ranged from gruesome crime stories and necrophilia to cannibalism and violent fantasies. The forum's administrators, who went by pseudonyms such as "Albert" and "Raffaelo," actively encouraged and moderated the discussions, often inserting themselves into threads to provide guidance and fuel the conversations.

As Marla dug deeper, she found contradictions. An account from a man named Gerard insisted the Café had been a performance-art collective that never served real flesh, using painstakingly realistic plant-based substitutes. He wrote long expositions on texture and mouthfeel and included lab notes. Another thread, however, contained photos that could not be explained away: surgical clamps, a steel prep table, a cooler stamped with government barcodes. There were also messages that talked about police raids, about rumors that had to be hushed with money. The forum's metadata showed posts disappeared and then reappeared with user handles altered—Redact used heavily, then undone.

Meiwes used various online forums to seek a "volunteer." He posted an advert looking for a "well-built man, 18–30, who would like to be eaten by me".

Armin Meiwes, then a 42-year-old computer technician from Wüstefeld, Germany, had harbored fantasies of cannibalism since childhood, triggered by reading Hansel and Gretel . Raised on a remote farm after his father and brother abandoned the family, Meiwes saw eating another person as a way to end loneliness by "having someone inside that never leaves".

In 1994, a figure known by the alias "Perro Loco" launched the Cannibal Cafe. Perro Loco (Spanish for "Crazy Dog") described himself as "the one true prophet of the Church of Dolcett," a reference to the online fantasy genre known as dolcett—depictions of willing human slaughter and consumption for erotic purposes.