Warholian Groupchat

Warholian Groupchat
Type	Social framework
Origin	2022
Field	Digital communication, social organization

Warholian Groupchat is a conceptual framework developed by Charlotte Fang to describe the intentional design and cultivation of online social spaces modeled after Andy Warhol's Factory. The concept was first articulated in Fang's June 2022 essay of the same name, where she analyzed her approach to developing Hot Pot (groupchat)—the formative Twitter groupchat that served as the origin point for Remilia Corporation.

The Warholian Groupchat model combines creative production, social scene cultivation, and performative communication within a carefully curated digital environment. It represents a systematic approach to generating both content and culture through selective membership and guided interaction, with the groupchat functioning simultaneously as a studio space, social environment, and performance venue.

This framework has been influential in understanding how digital communities can be intentionally structured to maximize creative output while developing distinctive cultural identities. The concept positioned Hot Pot and subsequent Remilia social formations as contemporary equivalents to historical artistic salons and studios, adapted for networked communication environments.

Core principles

Factory parallels

The Warholian Groupchat framework draws explicit parallels between online chat environments and Andy Warhol's Factory—the New York studio space that functioned simultaneously as a production facility, social scene, and cultural nexus during the 1960s and 1970s. Key similarities identified by Fang include:

• Amalgamation of studio and social space — Blurring the boundaries between work and socializing to create a continuous creative environment
• Distributed authorship — Collaborative creation where ideas emerge from group interaction rather than individual isolation
• Collective production — Leveraging diverse skills within the group to execute projects across various media
• Gender balance — Intentionally maintaining both feminine and masculine energies to create dynamic interaction
• Cultural influence — Generating styles, vernacular, and aesthetic approaches that extend beyond the group itself
• Centralized curation — Maintaining a singular curatorial vision that guides the space's development

According to Fang, "Hot Pot at its height was a carefully curated and cultivated space designed to be an engine of posting content," similar to how Warhol's Factory operated as an engine of artistic production guided by his aesthetic sensibilities.

Performance as methodology

Central to the Warholian Groupchat concept is the idea of performative communication—engaging in conversation as a form of creative expression rather than merely information exchange. Fang describes this as members intuitively understanding "the improv-like dynamic of back and forth banter leaning towards certain goal points of long post jokes that simultaneously achieve thoughtfulness, beauty and density on top of humor, spurned on by the approving reactions of the crowd and a constant meta-discourse on our own processes."

This performance element serves multiple functions:

• Generates content that can be repurposed for public platforms
• Develops distinctive verbal and conceptual styles
• Creates a heightened energy that encourages creative risk-taking
• Maintains engagement through social feedback mechanisms

Fang notes that she "stole around 3/4 of my tweets for the duration of the CFang account" from Hot Pot, describing the chat as "Charlotte's petite performance, a sort of lazy digital studio of unknowing artist's assistants, only ghostwriting content with genuine creativity for me to shamelessly propagate without credit."

Curatorial authoritarianism

Another key element of the Warholian Groupchat is what Fang describes as "the active, central role Warhol played in the construction of the Factory as a never ending stage play, a secretly authoritarian position maintained by a personified mega-ego that was the central pillar for all the hangabouts, who watched his indications of approval and direction—present even when not present."

Fang acknowledges applying this approach to Hot Pot, describing herself as "an aggressive cultivator of the direction and vibe and type of posting I desired to see and initial curator of the entry of members—despite a general deference to the democracy among friends." This curatorial authoritarianism maintains a consistent aesthetic and philosophical direction while allowing individual creativity to flourish within established parameters.

Implementation in Hot Pot

The Warholian Groupchat framework was most fully realized in Hot Pot, the Twitter groupchat that existed from 2020 to 2023 and served as the origin point for Remilia Corporation. According to Fang, Hot Pot functioned as "an externalization of a collective subconsciousness" through several key mechanisms:

• Selective membership — Carefully choosing participants based on virtue, engagement, and artfulness
• Constant throughput — Maintaining a flow of new members while removing inactive ones
• Performative expectation — Establishing posting as performance as the primary mode of interaction
• Hybrid structure — Combining business and socializing within a single environment
• Enforced irreverence — Maintaining a playful, non-serious tone even when discussing serious projects

Hot Pot implemented these principles by conducting both casual socializing and project development within the same space, which "enforced a constant attitude of irreverence, something I consider so essential to our work. It also meant that every project we did still had the opportunity to receive input from the overall group, with our output judged against our collective aesthetic standards."

Experimental communication

Under the Warholian Groupchat framework, Hot Pot engaged in extended periods of experimental communication that combined play with linguistic and conceptual exploration. Fang describes one example: "an entire week where we spoke to each other in only google translated Chinese, which ultimately leaked out into the timeline and lead to both a wave of 'chinese posting.'"

This experiment with Chinese posting revealed multiple layers of intention beyond mere absurdity:

• Exploiting Twitter's built-in translation feature to create a specific reading experience
• Allowing nearly twice as much text to fit within Twitter's character limits
• Exploring "broken English as a new form of poetry"
• Engaging with neo-orientalism as an aesthetic domain
• Creating a novel interaction where "clicking the translate tweet button is like opening a present"

These experimental approaches to communication extended beyond Hot Pot to influence Remilia's public-facing content and aesthetic.

Evolution and adaptation

The Warholian Groupchat framework evolved over time, particularly following external challenges. Fang explicitly draws parallels between Hot Pot's transition following the Milady Cancel controversy and Warhol's shift after being shot by Valerie Solanas:

"He went through a similar transition after he was shot by Valerie Solanas—closing the Factory except to his close friends, maintaining it mainly as a fairly serious office for Interview magazine. I suppose I've been shot now, too."

This transition involved several shifts:

• More refined membership criteria
• Reduced performative emphasis
• Separation of business functions from social interactions
• Increased focus on operational security

By 2023, Hot Pot had evolved away from its original Warholian configuration, becoming what Fang described as "mundane as well as more serious; the collective begins to look like a real studio, and the chat downshifted into just a close friend group." The chat was eventually closed entirely during the Bonkler 9/11 crisis in September 2023.

Theoretical context

Historical continuity

The Warholian Groupchat concept positions online social spaces within a historical continuity of creative gathering places. Fang draws connections to various historical precedents:

• Vienna's Café Central, which hosted Lenin, Stalin, Freud, Tito, and other historical figures
• Paris cafés frequented by Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Picasso
• The Ancient Greek Agora where Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle debated
• High school lunch tables where Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, DMX, and Notorious B.I.G. held rap battles
• The Central Saloon in Seattle where grunge bands performed before achieving fame

This historical framing suggests that "politics, art, and history follow along veins of significance intersecting with liminal windows of opportunity. At these intersections are centers of socialization, where seemingly leisurely discussion paves the roads towards immortality in the memories of our descendants."

Digital evolution

Fang positions the Warholian Groupchat as the digital evolution of these historical precedents, arguing that "the groupchat is the new social center. The cafes, lounges, and forums which incubate history defining thoughts are now digital. They can be created, curated, and maintained with unprecedented ease."

This perspective frames online communication not merely as a degraded substitute for in-person interaction, but as the contemporary evolution of salon culture—potentially more powerful due to its flexibility, permanence through archiving, and ability to rapidly form and reform around emerging ideas.

See also

• Hot Pot (groupchat)
• Remilia Corporation
• Remilia Collective
• Charlotte Fang