"Quotes"

I occasionally bring up with my friends how I think it will be awesome once lab grown meat is more popular that we can grow human meat and eat ourselves.

I'm told "long pork" tastes like veal or salted pork, depending on the cut.

Kinda.

The big shifts come from social attitudes rather than legal consequences.

Doesn't mean the law isn't worthwhile, only that the threat of punishment feels far more distant and abstract than social consequences.

For example, here in the UK, knife crime and drink driving were addressed by changing public perception of them rather than increasing legal consequences.

See also "The War on Drugs" to reflect on the powers of the law vs society.

Cannibalism isn't exactly illegal.

Murder and manslaughter obviously is, but chowing down on the remains is a violation of other laws like interfering with a corpse, indecent treatment of a body, or improper disposal of human remains. There's no law specifically outlawing cannibalism.

If you didn't kill the person, but only ate part of them (maybe a lucky find on the hiking trail after a bear has been through because they were already dead, you thought nobody would notice a few extra chunks missing, you've always been curious, and this was a once in a lifetime opportunity) and get caught, the punishment is actually relatively mild. In some circumstances it could be even less than aggravated assault.

a pipeline of young men being funneled into garbage ideologies on the internet.

Yeah, we had that way before the internet.

Either end. There are decent kids out there, we need them all to be like that.

Ummmm....

Rape is 100% a more popular fetish than cannibalism. Or at least, being raped is. At least in the parts of society I interact in. Maaaaybe you are part of some social network that is invisible to me which is actually more representative of society as a whole, where having a cannibalism kink is super common... but I kinda doubt it.

Based on my world view -

• Fantasies about being raped are super common, and largely acceptable. Its not something you would talk about in a job interview, but if you're sharing drinks with friends and there are some friends of friends there, talking about your rape fantasy would be mildly scanalous in the way that strengthens social bonds.
• Fantasies about raping someone else are less common - but this might be due to social pressure. Social acceptance is the same as having a being-raped fantasy if you say you enjoy the accoutrements - you can discuss with friends of friends how you like pinning partners down, tying them up, choking them, rough sex, etc. But out and out saying "the idea of raping someone is really hot to me" is not socially acceptable in the same way, and is something you would reserve for deep conversations with close and trusted friends and partners.
• Having a fantasy about eating human flesh is even less acceptable than having a fantasy about raping people. Most modern sex-havers understand the underlying appeal of power dynamics in the bedroom. Far fewer understand the desire to do something like eat human meat, or its relationship to sex in general. This puts cannibalism closer to something like watersports - it isn't just socially taboo. It is gross. It is the kind of fetish that you would only admit to having with other friends who you already know are very kink-friendly.

Smoking the reefer is technically illegal in lots of places, but it is pretty commonplace in most western nations. Even if it is illegal, it isn't too hard to find a hookup or friends who will smoke with you. The same can't be said for eating human flesh. You can't just join the "ethical human flesh eaters" facebook group for your city and ask which morgues are cool with selling a few kilos from the hobo that had a heart attack under the bridge last week. You can't even join the "pretend cannibals" facebook group for your city where you all meet up for a dinner party where someone made a pot roast and you all pretend that it is actually human.

Cannibalism is not, in any way, shape, or form, by any stretch of the imagination, socially acceptable. Like, at all.

Point is it's not actually considered so distasteful, just illegal

Cannibalism actually is NOT illegal in most jurisdictions 😬

It's just really horrific & unthinkable so most people tend to self- regulate by simply having no desire or inclination to eat other people.

And perhaps one reason most places haven't even bothered to criminalize cannibalism is that murder and tampering with dead body etc are already illegal, so Dahmer-types would already be charged with those crimes.

Seriously though, cannibalism is a pretty popular fetish

Imma have a hot take here:

Having a rape fetish is fine. As long as it's only a fantasy, or only done in consensual pretend roleplay, etc. It's fine to fetishize and fantasize about rape as long as you're not actually raping anybody.

(Same as those with a cannibalism fetish. Fantasizing or roleplaying about eating people: fine. Actually eating people: not fine.)

Also...

There are plenty of things people don’t enjoy or fetishize

[citation needed]

Everything is somebody's fetish. EVERYTHING. No matter what you think up, I guarantee there's some twisted fucker out there who gets their rocks off on it.