SCP-3028

Description

SCP-3028 is a wooden window box planter. Flowering plants grown in SCP-3028 will grow at roughly twenty times their natural rate. Plants grown in SCP-3028, hereby SCP-3028-1, will develop abnormal pigmentation patterns on their leaves and petals beginning at maturity in the form of easily legible English-language political or social commentary that is almost universally considered irrelevant, nonsensical, or objectionable; a sample can be found in Appendix A. These statements (hereby SCP-3028-2) often deal with current events¹ that have received substantial media attention in the country where SCP-3028 is located at the time.

Plants grown from seeds produced by SCP-3028-1 will develop additional instances of SCP-3028-2 that expound on the originating instance, even if they are not planted in SCP-3028. When related SCP-3028-2 are placed in the proper order, SCP-3028-1 and its descendants can be used to produce complete essays that attempt to defend the position present in the original SCP-3028-2 instance. Additional descendants of SCP-3028-1 beyond the number necessary to complete an essay will repeat SCP-3028-2 instances found on prior descendants.

Essays produced by SCP-3028, while unusual in content, possess no readily apparent anomalous properties; however, some researchers have suggested that additional research may be necessary to properly establish a control group with which these essays may be compared.

Appendix A: Sample of SCP-3028-2 instances. Full content of the essays associated with each instance is available to authorized personnel upon request.

• "Chemotherapy is anti-feminist."
• "If Gandhi really wanted to make a difference, he would have voted."
• "School lunches should not include grains or vegetables."
• "Feudalism was the closest we've ever been to a socialist utopia."
• "Self-defense is indefensible."
• "Talking to your neighbors is the beginning of the slippery slope towards communism."
• "California should give Nestlé full control of its water supply."
• "Mike Pence was the secret puppet master of the Obama administration."
• "Plants are a blight on the urban landscape."
• "The new McDonalds ad campaign is a Russian psyop funded by George Soros."
• "Junk mail is good, and everyone should read it."
• "Trump's secret Muslim leanings say a lot about today's radical left."
• "Everybody who hasn't kissed a black baby is a racist."
• "The Columbine shooters did nothing wrong."
• "Cities starved for parking spaces should build them in the suburbs."

Appendix B: History of SCP-3028.

Recovered documentation indicates that SCP-3028 was made in early 2011 by two individuals known only by their pseudonyms, "Hat Trick 6" and "DREAmS²", both of which are active in the New York City anomalous art community. It was auctioned off at the 2011 Urban Nomads Auction³ for $2,000 USD to Nicole McConnell, an Albany-based lawyer and art collector. McConnell's diary describes a 'morbid fascination' with SCP-3028; she would regularly catalog the statements she found most disagreeable.

On 2015-05-02, Nicole McConnell died of natural causes at the age of 66; as per her will, her art collection was distributed among her grandchildren. SCP-3028 was given to Trevor Stiles, a 23-year-old software engineer living in Boston, Massachusetts. Stiles claims to have originally used SCP-3028 primarily to grow vegetables for personal consumption; however, after several months, he began to use SCP-3028 to produce opinion pieces that he would submit to various publications as a practical joke. When several of these pieces were published and attracted considerable attention, Stiles instead created websites under various pseudonyms for the express purpose of hosting SCP-3028-produced content; when a piece was published, he would then (with the assistance of several associates) draw attention to it on social media, generating advertising revenue when incredulous or amused readers visited the site to read the piece.

In February of 2016, Stiles left his prior place of employment to operate a start-up business based on the aforementioned revenue model. He hired three employees to perform curation, gardening, search engine optimization, and other miscellaneous duties. One, in violation of a non-disclosure agreement they had signed upon being hired, described SCP-3028 and its effects on several social media accounts. The Foundation performed a routine investigation, after which SCP-3028 was confiscated, all relevant documentation was retrieved, and all persons of interest were amnesticized.

Appendix C: Proposed amendment to containment procedures made by Dr. Grimes, SCP-3028's HMCL supervisor:

Personnel should be screened for appropriate temperament before assignment to SCP-3028.

Commentary by Dr. Grimes:

Initially, my concern for this object was that exposure to deliberately provocative political diatribes en masse would be detrimental to the psyche of researchers who grew and transcribed them — or at least, those researchers who couldn't stay emotionally detached (and the botany department training does not stress emotional detachment).

This turned out not to be a problem — for one, most researchers are already subject to bigoted statements that are both aimed at their particular demographic and popular among large segments of the population, so SCP-3028's provocations do not compare. Beyond that, most of the researchers who did have difficulty handling the work were prompt and professional in their requests for reassignment.

A more pressing issue is that on two occasions, researchers have actively requested assignment to SCP-3028 and remained on the project even while it caused them distress. In both cases, the researchers would spend extended periods of time reading archived material produced by SCP-3028, expressing dismay or anger when presented with opinions that deeply conflicted with their worldview or represented forms of discrimination to which they were subject. Over time, this affected the quality of their research and ability to work with other researchers. Upon confrontation, both admitted to using SCP-3028-produced content as a method of deliberately causing themselves distress.

Needless to say, use of an SCP object for self-harm is unprofessional, and personnel with these tendencies should not be permitted to work on SCP-3028.