Hot Pot (groupchat)

Hot Pot
Type	Digital social space
Origin	Late 2020
Field	Social media, communication

Hot Pot was a curated Twitter groupchat that existed from late 2020 until September 2023, forming the origin of Remilia Corporation and serving as the creative engine behind its early projects. Named after the Chinese communal dining experience where ingredients are added to a shared simmering broth, the chat functioned as what participants described as an "external consciousness" for its members, with each person contributing distinct elements to a collective creative environment.

The groupchat operated as a selective creative space where members were encouraged to engage in uninhibited, performative posting—a communication style that would later become central to Remilia's creative approach. Charlotte Fang has described Hot Pot as a "Warholian groupchat," drawing parallels to Andy Warhol's Factory in its fusion of studio and social space, its distributed authorship, and its cultural influence.

Hot Pot was central to Remilia's early identity, serving as both the social substrate for what would become Remilia Collective and the incubator for ideas later expressed in projects like Milady Maker. The chat was eventually closed in September 2023 during the Bonkler 9/11 crisis, marking a significant transition in Remilia's organizational structure.

Origin and structure

The earliest version of Hot Pot was founded by Street Don in late 2020 as a Twitter direct message groupchat following the deletion of Ibn Sonya. Don organized members of Sonya's audience in a search to find Charlotte Fang's new account. On discovering Fang, posting on a little-known private account known as Grum Slah the Gabba King, relinquished control of the chat to Fang.

The metaphor of Hot Pot was used to describe the constant introduction and removal of new members, like the ingredients in a shared hot pot soup. The chat operated within Twitter's platform limitations, which restricted group size to 75 members and imposed daily message limits on individuals. These technical constraints reinforced the group's selectivity, as inactive members would be removed to make room for new participants, and highly active members would sometimes need to use alternate accounts to continue discussions after exceeding message limits.

Membership was highly selective, with potential participants carefully screened for "virtue, engagement, and artfulness" before being admitted. The group maintained an explicit guideline often shared with new members: "The only rule of hot pot is post hard and neverstop. No backspaces, no tabbing out, inject yourself in and give yourself up to the group hyperstream."

Philosophy and practice

Warholian Groupchat

Fang has described the design of Hot Pot as a "Warholian groupchat", having parallels to Andy Warhol's Factory, noting several key similarities:

• Amalgamation of studio and social space
• Distributed and collaborative authorship of work
• Collective production methodologies
• Balance of femininity and masculinity in content
• Cultivation of cultural influence and mystique
• Central curatorial role of the founder

Fang has characterized their position in Hot Pot 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," similar to Warhol's authoritative yet often unspoken direction of the Factory scene.

Digital salon culture

Hot Pot members conceptualized their groupchat as a digital evolution of historical salon culture—a continuation of traditions established in venues like Vienna's Café Central, Parisian literary cafés, and Ancient Greek agoras. They viewed their online discussions as operating in this lineage, where seemingly casual conversation could develop into culturally significant ideas and movements.

Writing was emphasized as the fundamental medium of thought and exchange, with members considering long-form written communication essential to developing and preserving ideas. The chat's environment sought to replicate the creative ferment of historical intellectual gathering places, adapted for digital network conditions.

Performative posting

Hot Pot's central practice was performative posting a communication style existing "in a halfway state between satirical entertainment and stark sincerity in varying degrees per statement." This approach allowed members to explore ideas outside their comfort zones through a blend of humor, provocation, and earnest discussion.

According to group members, this performative approach facilitated freedom of expression by removing self-censorship, allowing for the development of ideas through playful, sometimes provocative rhetoric. This communication style would later become central to Milady Maker and other Remilia projects.

The chat engaged in extended periods of experimental communication, including what Fang described as "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.'" These experiments often combined humor with deeper explorations of language and communication.

Shared values

Hot Pot operated on a foundation of shared values described as "a rejection of ugliness, of scarcity mentality, of slave mindset, of atheism and blackpills, in favor of strong conscious virtues like honor, respect, loyalty, faith and purity." These principles aligned with what would later become Remilia's core philosophical orientation, particularly concepts like Abundance Mindset and Network Spirituality.

The chat's exclusive nature was justified as a means of maintaining these values. Members viewed the space as "a safe haven from the ugliness and mediocrity of the average world," requiring a screening process that inevitably excluded many who sought to join.

Evolution and phases

Early period (2020-2021)

In its initial phase, Hot Pot functioned primarily as a creative and social space, generating ideas and content that would later inform Remilia's projects. During this period, the chat was highly performative, with members engaging in extended riffs, conceptual explorations, and collaborative ideation.

Fang has noted that many of the early Remilia content originated in Hot Pot during this period, describing it 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."

Project development period (2021-2022)

As Remilia formalized into a corporation, Hot Pot began to serve a dual purpose as both social space and production environment. The chat became what Fang described as "a group studio space where we conceptualized and actually coordinated production of all of our Remilia projects, LARPing business talking over idle chatter."

During this period, Hot Pot generated the concepts for major Remilia projects, with Fang noting that "every Remilia project has started as an off hand 'what if' joke that we said 'Wait! Why don't we do it for real?'"

Transition and closure (2022-2023)

In May 2022, during the Milady Cancel controversy, Hot Pot became a subject of public scrutiny when hackers leaked screenshots from the groupchat attempting to cancel its members. These materials were misinterpreted by journalists and social media influencers who took performative, ironic, and satirical exchanges as literal statements, contributing to the broader controversy surrounding Charlotte Fang and Milady Maker, while creating serious privacy concerns for its members and exposing many to harassment.

Following the Cancel, Hot Pot began to transition away from its highly performative nature. Fang has described this shift: "As Remilia business has became more critical and our operations subject to sophisticated attacks, membership has been refined and we've been lead to transition away from the effort of a highly performative environment."

Fang drew parallels between Hot Pot's exposure during the Cancel and Warhol's post-shooting shift: "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."

The chat was eventually closed in September 2023 during the Bonkler 9/11 crisis, which led to significant changes in Remilia's organizational structure. According to Remilia sources, the closure was due to "lawsuit confidentiality complications," marking the end of Hot Pot's role as a de facto Collective space.

Significance to Remilia

Hot Pot functioned as the developmental precursor to the formal Remilia Corporation, providing both the personal connections and the conceptual foundation for the collective's projects. Many creative approaches that would become associated with Remilia—including performative posting, distinctive writing styles, and memes—were first developed within the Hot Pot environment before being "released out onto the public timeline."

The chat also served as a prototype and testing ground for what would later become Remilia Chat, with members' experiences informing the development of features like real-time typing displays and exocortex integration. The limitations of Twitter's platform highlighted desired features that would later be incorporated into Remilia's communication tools.

Relationship to Remilia Collective

During its existence, Hot Pot served as the primary social substrate for what would become known as Remilia Collective. Membership in the chat functioned as a de facto marker of inclusion in the broader Remilia ecosystem, though the two were not perfectly aligned.

The "Hot Pot era" (2021-2023) was the primary phase Remilia Collective's development, when the groupchat served as the central organizing structure for the wider network of Remilia contributors. Following Hot Pot's closure in September 2023, the Collective is said only to continue to exist as an "idea".

Legacy

Hot Pot's influence extended beyond specific creative outputs to shape Remilia's organizational approach and philosophical outlook. The chat established patterns of selective collaboration, performative expression, and value-oriented community building that would become defining features of Remilia's projects and public persona.

The groupchat's experimentation with digital communication formats also informed Remilia's later technical development goals, particularly the creation of communication tools incorporating real-time typing displays and personal wiki databases to create what members described as "a distributed learning network that uplifts all its users."

Within Remilia's internal historiography, Hot Pot represents the collective's formative phase—the creative crucible that established both interpersonal connections and conceptual frameworks for subsequent projects. Its culture of selective inclusion, performative communication, and shared values created the foundation for Remilia Corporation's distinctive approach to creative production in digital networks.

See also

• Remilia Corporation
• Remilia Collective
• Charlotte Fang
• Bonkler 9/11
• Warholian Groupchat