About 3 years ago, I decided to do a long-con art experiment.

I hired a woman to do a cooking show on youtube. An average cooking show, just a mom who enjoys cooking showing what she does.

For the first year, as she built up a fanbase, the recipes were normal, the videos were basically exactly like any other cooking channel.

After a year, she had 30,000 subscribers and a small community in her comments section.

In the second year, we began the project.

Very slowly, very subtly, each episode began to include subliminal hints of cannibalism.

First, it was just words. Mentioning how cute her son looked and how she could just eat him up. How this thick sirloin reminds her of her husband after one of his marine workouts. Etc

I trained a convolutional neural network on human anatomy, and began processing the meat footage through it.

Very slightly at first, the imaginary knob started at 1.

Chicken breasts looked just a tiny bit less like chicken breasts, etc.

Over the next year, we slowly, imperceptibly turned up that cannibalism knob.

By the end of the 2nd year, she had 80,000 subscribers *and* a patreon bringing in over a thousand dollars a month.

She, a very good cook, actually wrote a cookbook for the channel. Perfectly normal.

Last year, we began the end game of the project.

She began to complain about her husband. Very slightly at first, just the normal kinds of frustration venting people do.

Each video, now with the cannibalism knob turned to 2.71, included a bit more negative sentiment toward her husband, and sometimes her two kids. Minor complaints turned into heartfelt advice about dealing with stress, etc

This ramped up until August 12th.

The video, "the MOST Tender Brisket Grandma Kept a SECRET - until NOW" was 13 minutes long.

I cranked the virtual knob up to 4 for it.

In the next video, she mentions her son went to summer camp.

On August 18th, the video "Wait Til You Try This Slow-roasted Porcheta" uploaded.

I cranked the knob to 5.

In it, as she's rolling the pork butt which vaguely seems not to be pork butt, she talks about how her daughter is happy to visit her grandma.

At both 3:18 and 6:12 you can hear a brief, muffled scream. It's just barely long and loud enough for you to hear it.

On August 26th, she posted "12 Porkchops that are ILLEGALLY Tasty!"

I cranked the virtual dial to 8 as she cooked porkchops 12 different ways.

She mentions, with a sigh, how quiet the house is nowadays.

For the next month, every 2 days she'd post a video with a meat recipe. All were pork.

I turned the dial back to 0. The food looked *delicious*. Professional food artists are more expensive than you'd think.

She joked more, seemed more relaxed, more joyful.

On September 25th, she uploaded her final video.

In it, she and her two kids, in matching aprons, together cook "The Perfect Meatloaf: Try It and See For Yourself!"

The last few minutes, they all eat it, expressing satisfaction with how good it is.

In the last 6 months, her subscriber base understandably shrank as she stopped posting videos. The patreon dried up as well, with only a few subscribers left.

Most of her fans moved on to other cooking shows.

But the ones who remain, about 8,000, are *all* very good at making pork dishes from what they share on their social media.

And most of them have, at some point, thanked her profusely for "showing me how to fix my life" or similar words.

I call that a resounding success for an art project.

All patreon money, after basic expenses and some luxury items, was donated to various domestic violence organizations