The Soup Pot

The Soup Pot is a diverse group of high school students that sprouted from a need of friendship. Originally a core group of people based on Google Hangouts, The Soup Pot, commonly abbreviated TSP, has since expanded to other platforms such as Discord, Reddit and Minecraft, adding some new members along the way. On a normal day, the members of TSP would share memes, discuss celebrities and various interests, and occasionally call for four hours.

## Summary

"The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends... Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

*— Anton Ego*

Often the world is unkind to new talent, as Anton Ego stated, yet friends are what the new needs.  The Soup Pot is not a simple group chat on Hangouts, but instead, a culture embedded within those who are in the group chat.  It is not the people that change the Soup Pot, but the Soup Pot that changes people. The people make the Soup Pot and in turn it changes them, a unique, beautiful example of the perfect symbiotic relationship.

The Soup Pot, abbreviated as TSP or simply SP, was created in the month of September, in the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand-and-Eighteen, by "JoLee", as a Google Hangouts group chat called "get to know people." A week or two into its life, it was renamed The Soup Pot, and the tradition of assigning emojis to each member in the title was adopted unanimously. The initial people in the SP were JoLee, Tomato, Cucumber, (Censored), and Potato, with Oil Can (later left), Lemon, Chili, Pigeon, Shark, Pretzel, and Spinach added subsequently.

As the Soup Pot grew, its influence on HSD (High Source of Distraction) and other social platforms has increased exponentially. This influence was exhibited in certain group projects such as the Cat Girl Project and the SP fan-fiction response. The SP, as it grew, also developed a weak sort of Soup Pot dialect.

The SP has also become a place full of edgy memes, some of which appear in this gallery. Notable senders of shameless, edgy memes include (Censored), Leila, and Kevin.

## General Information

### Founding

Chef, due to her interest in leadership and her conspicuous extroversion, decided in the month of September, 2018 to bring together a group of people she wanted to get to know. She had initially met these people on HSD, a social platform consisting of nearly a thousand distracted high school students. Upon reading their bios and perusing their commenting pattern, she decided that these people were compatible enough to interact peaceably in one group. Although she knew little of these people beyond what she could garner from their biography, Chef was ready to take the risk and conduct what she called her "experiment."

The original members included:

* Chef
* Tomato
* Doritos
* Cucumber
* Lemon
* Potato

After much initial awkwardness among the various members, Chef instituted a number of methods through which to start conversation. One of these methods was "question of the day," abbreviated QOTD. Chef would ask one random question a day which all members of the group were required to answer, upon pain of death. This institution died out as the group grew and the need for contrived conversation-starters decreased.

### Naming

The group was originally called "Get-to-know people," a name concocted by the founder. Although not known at the time by the other members, Chef had a written list of the people involved in her life, which people she had divided into a number of categories depending on her relationship with them. One of the categories contained people whom she did not know well but to whom she wished to build closer relationships. It appeared that many TSP members were in that category.

After some time, due to the diverse nature of the group, the chat was renamed "The Soup Pot" and the metaphor of the group representing a hobo stew began. Accordingly, each member selected for himself or herself a unique emoji to represent their "vegetable." Although the members called themselves "vegetables," their emojis included other food items such as french fries.

During this time, the title of the chat underwent multiple and frequent changes. Some minor disputes took place as to the formatting of the title.

## Content

The Soup Pot, despite its relatively limited member base, features wildly diverse content on a daily basis. Conversation can range from meme-spamming, pun exchanges, and insane ToD rounds, to theological debates, political discussions, and support and encouragement sessions. Doritos is the largest sender of memes, followed by Cucumber, Tomato, and Chili. Doritos commonly sends anime or racially- or politically-charged memes, and Cucumber specializes in making TSP-related memes. A limited selection of memes and other photos and videos from TSP can be found here.

Truth or Dare, often abbreviated ToD, is one of the rare but important highlights of TSP existence. Only about two or three sessions have taken place since the group began, but each time was landmarked by a drastic increase in messages and a whole 'nother ton of blackmail for members like Pigeon. In the first major ToD session, Doritos confessed his undying love for Shark; however, he unknowingly had a not-so-threatening rival in the form of Cucumber, who admitted, albeit reluctantly, his past feelings of the same nature in the most recent ToD. Following a long dramatic exchange fraught dilemma and heartbreak, Shark ended up choosing Doritos, with the passionate support of her sister the Chef. Cucumber left the group in disgrace. (He's returning, don't worry.)

When it comes to debates, Doritos takes the floor. Extreme in both his theological and political positions, this professional debater has a plethora of source-texts by his side. When he debates, he is not alone; the Force Ghosts of a hundred founding fathers as well as patriarchs stand behind him. Chef, practically the opposite in terms of political and theological spectrum, is Doritos' primary opponent. With her lofty liberal views (such as her emphasis on human sexuality and the desire to get married in unconventional settings), she is unafraid to challenge Doritos' beliefs.