Happy Lamp Flowers :)

July 24th, 2024 (Wednesday)

A while back, I watched a Lazy Masquerade video where he mentions an old website that allegedly sold human meat. It fascinated me because I've never seen or heard anyone else online mention it, even though it caused a LOT of outrage. This did happen in 2001, so it might've been overshadowed by...something else.

Sit the fuck back, relax, add a few more minutes to your Motorola V60, and don't let your little cousin scratch your Toxicity CD; this is the story of "ManBeef".

ManBeef.com was created on January 25th, 2001. According to its 'about us' page, ManBeef International Meats™ formed on April 20th (nice), 1982. They’d sold human meat to customers in over fifteen countries and opened three divisions in the United States during their nineteen years of operation. The page was signed off by ManBeef’s president, Joseph Christopherson.

How did ManBeef obtain human meat? Their 'procressing' page claimed it mostly came from “cadaver vending” and “organ donation companies” (whatever the fuck those are). Every body sent to ManBeef was inspected for contamination, diseases, drugs, toxins, and signs of smoking and alcohol abuse. Any substandard bodies were either returned to the vendor or donated to science.

The body would then be chopped up and each meat cut would be examined. If a single cut was low quality, none of the meat from that body would be sold. Everything was handled in a sanitary workplace; equipment was constantly cleaned, employees wore protective gear, and at no point would staff leave any meat out of view.

ManBeef didn’t accept bodies that came from people over forty years old, showed signs of decay or disease and weren’t in good physical shape, and vegetarians. They explained the last disqualification in a response on their ‘mailbag’ page:

"...The best meat tends to come from less active people who are well fed. We have found that meat from vegetarians is tough, stringy, and bland in flavor. For this reason we do not offer meat from vegetarian bodies.

One would think that because they share similar behavior patterns with cattle that they would be just as rich in flavor. This turns out to be untrue. The reason for this is that they are generally more active and do not have a high enough intake of protein or fatty calories to make them 'plump' enough for consuming.

Because vegetarian meat does not have much 'marbling'[,] the meat can be extremely dry and bland in flavor when cooked."

To prevent customers from illegally disposing human remains, ManBeef offered a disposal service. Every product was shipped with a separate box that could be used to send excess meat or bones back to the company. I briefly wondered if this service could be used to dispose of a murder victim’s body, but this was quickly answered:

“Every product we sell has its genetic records stored in our main database. The DNA profile of every returned piece of organic material will be cross-checked with our database. If the DNA profile is not in our database, the bone, flesh, or other organic material is not from ManBeef. In the event that unknown human organic material is sent to us for disposal we will contact the authorities.”

Damn.

Due to their high standards and popular demand, ManBeef’s products were expensive. Prices on their ‘human meat products’ page ranged from $26.99 to $87.75 per pound (this would be $31.73 to $155.76 in 2024). However, the only thing you could actually buy from ManBeef.com was merchandise.

Sorry babe, but the ManBeef bucket hat stays on during sex.

ManBeef wrote on their ‘FAQ’ page that they preferred dealing with customers “on a more personal basis” and couldn’t keep up with the high demand of human meat. Anybody who wanted to buy ManBeef products had to apply for a membership, pass a criminal background check, and sign a few forms. I’m not entirely sure why, but ManBeef emphasized in their policies’ page that they did NOT sell to convicted cannibals.

When somebody at Snopes tried to apply for a ManBeef membership, they were told their scheduled date for a background check was May 21st, 2001. Disappointingly, they never heard nor received anything.

ManBeef was NOT well received. Snopes wrote about a Sudanese newspaper being shut down for two days after it published an article about ManBeef, due to "offending to the public taste."

The Democrat and Chronicle published the earliest article I could find about ManBeef on March 20th, 2001. Steve Orr wrote in it:

“This site most likely is a political statement by some person or group that doesn’t think much of meat. Maybe it was prompted by the furor over mad cow disease.”

“But it’s impossible to tell for sure the true purpose of ManBeef. The site keeps a completely straight face—I could find no anti-meat rhetoric, no jokes, no hint that it was anything but a real business venture.”

Steve reached out to Joseph Christopherson through email. When Steve wrote that he didn’t believe anything Joseph wrote, the latter responded by saying he was unable to provide more information. He didn't like people seeing ManBeef as a joke.

Tim Whyte wrote the next article about ManBeef in The Signal on April 8th, 2001. He wrote about the creator being interviewed on a Los Angeles radio station, who used a voice modulator due to concerns about the death threats he’d been receiving. What did this interview consist of? I have no fucking clue.

The Ithaca Journal reported on June 20th, 2001 that ManBeef listed their address as a non-existent location in Binghamton, New York. Although a Binghamton police captain said ManBeef was just “a pretty elaborate” spoof, the website pissed off residents to the point where city officials were looking for a way to stop ManBeef from using the city’s name.

A 16-year-old boy from North Carolina was identified as the website’s administrator by the phone number used to register ManBeef.com. He told the Press & Sun-Bulletin via email on June 19th, 2001:

"I was responsible for registering the domain name, hosting the [website,] and doing some development of programs that powered part of the site...that was my only involvement.”

He denied being the creator of ManBeef.com but previously spoke with the creator. Despite this, he received so much harrassment about ManBeef that he stopped using his phone and lost interest in web hosting.

On July 14th, 2001, The Columbian published an article confirming ManBeef was a hoax. The website’s creator was a 21-year-old computer graphic designer in Los Angeles using the alias “Joseph Christopherson”. A few internet sources name him, but I don’t know the legitimacy of them.

Why did he create ManBeef.com? He explained in an email:

"As society slowly becomes more and more jaded, it takes more to get a rise out of people...The subject of human meat was chosen because of its ability to churn the viewers stomach and help outrage the more 'sensitive' viewers. This includes Bible thumpers."

"The rest of society should not be forced to only view sugar-coated media, because some individuals are inadequate in the parenting department."

"Even though the concept behind ManBeef is extremely outrageous, many individuals did believe it was a factual company. Making people ponder the existence of such a company forces those people to examine other sites with more scrutiny."

ManBeef.com was reported as inactive by a Democrat and Chronicle article by Steve Orr on November 10th, 2002. It briefly became a porn site before going offline again.

Please add one of ManBeef's 88x31 buttons to your site, I think it'd be really funny if it became popular again after 23 years.