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The Backrooms

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Vortex3427 (talk | contribs) at 12:29, 26 February 2023 (@TreeLethargy Keep it simple: people who have no idea what the Backrooms are will come here for information, and will have probably not heard of words like "disquieting" or "esoteric" in an SCP/analog horror-reminiscent context, and "querying" does not need to be there when "asking" is much easier to understand. Also do not add your own analysis of the creepypasta in the article (WP:OR): e.g. "reminiscent of housing from the 1970s and 1980s" is not in the source.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An image of the Backrooms. A large, open room with carpet, fluorescent lights and yellow wallpaper. A gap in the wall shows similar rooms extending without limits.
A typical depiction of the Backrooms, digitally rendered

The Backrooms is an online urban legend originating from a creepypasta posted on a 2019 4chan thread. One of the most well-known examples of the internet aesthetic of liminal spaces, which depicts usually busy locations as unnaturally empty, the Backrooms was first described as a maze of empty office rooms that can only be entered by "[noclipping] out of reality".

As its popularity grew, internet users expanded upon the original concept by creating different levels and entities which inhabit the Backrooms. Fan-made video games, collaborative fiction wikis and YouTube videos have also been created: a series of horror shorts created by YouTuber Kane Pixels in 2022 is credited with popularizing Backrooms content on the platform, and he is slated to direct a film adaptation of his Backrooms videos.

Original creepypasta

On May 12, 2019, an anonymous user started a thread on /x/, 4chan's paranormal-themed board, asking users to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'".[1][2] One of the posts was the original photo of the Backrooms: a picture of a large carpeted, open room with yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting on a Dutch angle.[3] It is not known where the photo was taken.[4]

Another user replied to this post with the first description of the Backrooms:[4]

If you're not careful and you noclip[a] out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you

— Anonymous, 4chan (May 13, 2019)[1]

Impact and fandom

As the creepypasta grew in popularity, users began to share stories about the Backrooms on subreddits such as r/creepypasta and later r/backrooms.[2] A fandom began to develop around the Backrooms and creators expanded upon the original iteration of the creepypasta by creating additional floors or "levels" and entities which populate them.[4][5] Happy Mag noted in particular two other levels: Level 1, a level with industrial architecture, and Level 2, a darkly lit level with long service tunnels, with the original version named Level 0.[5]

As new levels were devised in r/backrooms, a faction of fans who preferred the original Backrooms split off from the fandom. A Reddit user named Litbeep created another subreddit called r/TrueBackrooms focusing only on the original version. ABC News said that unlike fandoms surrounding existing properties, the lack of a canonical Backrooms made "drawing a line between authentic storytelling and jokes" difficult. It grouped the Backrooms into an "emerging genre of collaborative online horror" which also included the SCP Foundation.[2][4] Wikis hosted on Fandom and Wikidot dedicated to the Backrooms lore were established.[6] By March 2022, r/backrooms had over 157,000 members.[2]

Dan Erickson, creator of the television series Severance (2022), named the Backrooms as one of his many influences while working on the series.[7]

Reception

An example of a liminal space. This is an image of a long, empty hallway.
The Backrooms have been associated with an internet aesthetic known as liminal spaces, which include "images of eerie and uninhabited spaces", such as the above empty hallway.[8]

Some sources state the Backrooms was the origin of liminal spaces, an internet aesthetic which depicts usually busy locations as unnaturally empty. The #liminalspaces hashtag has amassed nearly 100 million views on the social media platform TikTok.[8][9] A TikTok trend of videos that zoom in on Google Earth to reveal an entrance to the Backrooms have grown popular. Other sources describe the Backrooms as only a subgenre of the aesthetic.[10][11]

PC Gamer compared the Backrooms' various levels to H. P. Lovecraft's R'lyeh and The City in the manga Blame!, describing it as "an uncanny valley of place".[10] ABC News and Le Monde have compared it to the SCP Foundation, a similar creepypasta.[4][6] Professor Tama Leaver of Curtin University said that "these sort of memes work so well because they invite you to interpret what's not shown", believing that the "eerie feeling of familiarity" conjured by the Backrooms helped draw fans together.[2]

Adaptations

YouTube

In January 2022, a short horror film titled The Backrooms (Found Footage) was uploaded to YouTube. Created by then 16-year-old Kane Parsons of Northern California, known online as Kane Pixels, it is presented as a VHS tape recorded by a filmmaker who accidentally enters the Backrooms in the 1990s and is pursued by a monster.[12][13] Parsons used the software Blender and Adobe After Effects to create the environment of the Backrooms, and it took him a month to complete it. He described the Backrooms as a manifestation of a poorly remembered recollection of the late 90s and early 2000s.[2][4] The video has over 45 million views as of February 2023.[14][15]

The short was praised by the fandom[14] and received positive reviews from critics. WPST called it "the scariest video on the Internet".[16] Otaku USA categorized it as analog horror,[17] while Dread Central and Nerdist compared it favorably to the 2019 video game Control.[13][18] Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza predicted that the Backrooms, like the creepypasta Slender Man and its panned 2018 film adaptation, would eventually be adapted into a "slick but dismal 2-hour Hollywood movie."[19]

Expanding his videos into a series of sixteen shorts, Parsons introduced plot aspects such as ASYNC, an organization which opened a portal into the Backrooms in the 1980s.[4][20] The series has collectively garnered over 100 million views.[21] PC Gamer said Parsons caused "a kind of Backrooms revival",[10] and Backrooms content largely became popular on YouTube as a result of his series.[22] For his shorts, Parsons received a Creator Honors at the 2022 Streamy Awards from The Game Theorists.[23]

Film adaptation

On February 6, 2023, A24 announced that they are working on a film adaptation of the Backrooms, with Parsons set to direct over his summer vacation. Roberto Patino is set to write the screenplay, while James Wan, Michael Clear from Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, and Dan Levine of 21 Laps are set to produce.[12][20]

Video games

The Backrooms have been adapted into numerous video games, including on the platforms Steam and Roblox.[10][14][24] An indie game was released by Pie on a Plate Productions two months after the original creepypasta,[25] and was positively reviewed for its atmosphere but received criticism for its short length.[3][26][27] Many others, such as Enter the Backrooms, Noclipped and The Backrooms Project, were released in the following years.[24] Co-op multiplayer Escape the Backrooms by Fancy Games was praised by Bloody Disgusting for its depiction of the extended lore,[20][28] while The Backrooms 1998 (both 2022), a psychological survival horror game, was independently released by one-person developer Steelkrill Studio and was noted by reviewers for its found footage visuals and limited save system.[29][30]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ No clipping is a video game term for commands which allow the player to go through solid walls and objects, originating with games created with the Source engine.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b "unsettling images". 4chan (4plebs). May 12, 2019. Archived from the original on May 12, 2019. Retrieved January 31, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Lloyd, Andrew (March 29, 2022). "The Backrooms: How a Creepy Office Photo Became an Internet Bogeyman". Vice. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
  3. ^ a b Sandal, Michael L (April 30, 2020). "'The Backrooms Game' Brings a Modern Creepypasta to Life [What We Play in the Shadows]". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Dobuski, Michael (November 6, 2022). "The Backrooms: Horror storytelling goes online". ABC News. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c Patston, Manning (August 3, 2021). "The Backrooms: an eerie phenomenon lies behind these familiar hallways". Happy Mag. Archived from the original on February 1, 2022.
  6. ^ a b Benoit-Gonin, Corentin (April 29, 2022). "« The Backrooms », « Fondation SCP » : pour faire peur, ils écrivent leurs histoires à plusieurs" [The Backrooms, SCP Foundation: they write their stories to scare]. Le Monde (in French). Retrieved February 12, 2023.
  7. ^ Francisco, Eric (February 24, 2022). "Severance reveals the 'scary' and 'surreal' underbelly of office work in 2022". Inverse. Archived from the original on March 5, 2022.
  8. ^ a b Yalcinkaya, Günseli (April 14, 2021). "Inside the uncanny world of #liminalspaces TikTok". Dazed. Archived from the original on January 31, 2022.
  9. ^ Koch, Karl Emil (November 2, 2020). "Architecture: The Cult Following Of Liminal Space". Musée Magazine. Archived from the original on December 17, 2021.
  10. ^ a b c d Wickens, Katie (July 7, 2022). "Noclipping is no joke: the strange world of The Backrooms explained". PC Gamer. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  11. ^ Dirga, Nik (July 7, 2022). "WA island bunker image is a mysterious dose of fantasy". AAP Factcheck. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  12. ^ a b Grobar, Matt (February 6, 2023). "'The Backrooms' Horror Film Based On Viral Shorts By 17-Year-Old Kane Parsons In Works At A24, Atomic Monster, Chernin & 21 Laps". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved February 6, 2023.
  13. ^ a b McAndrews, Mary Beth (January 14, 2022). "'The Backrooms' Is A Found Footage Nightmare Freaking Out The Internet". Dread Central. Archived from the original on January 31, 2022.
  14. ^ a b c Rogers, Reece (May 11, 2022). "How to 'No-Clip' Reality and Arrive in the Backrooms". Wired. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
  15. ^ Parsons, Kane (January 6, 2022). The Backrooms (Found Footage) (Short film). YouTube. Kane Pixels. Retrieved February 12, 2023.
  16. ^ Russell, Erica (January 17, 2022). "'The Backrooms' Viral Horror Short Explained". WPST. Archived from the original on January 31, 2022.
  17. ^ Dennison, Kara (February 7, 2022). "See Attack on Titan Through the Eyes of Backrooms Director Kane Pixels". Otaku USA. Archived from the original on February 7, 2022.
  18. ^ Anderson, Kyle (March 22, 2022). "TERRIFYING BACKROOMS SHORT FILM IS ALSO SUPER IMPRESSIVE". Nerdist. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  19. ^ Beschizza, Rob (February 1, 2022). "Explore The Backrooms in this short found-footage horror flick". Boing Boing. Archived from the original on February 1, 2022.
  20. ^ a b c Burton, Carson (February 7, 2023). "YouTube Horror Series The Backrooms Is Getting Turned Into a Feature Film". IGN. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  21. ^ Goslin, Austen (February 8, 2023). "Viral horror video The Backrooms will be a movie from A24 and its 17-year-old director". Polygon. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  22. ^ Gutelle, Sam (February 9, 2023). "Teenage creator Kane Parsons will direct a Backrooms horror movie". Tubefilter. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  23. ^ Tinoco, Armando (December 4, 2022). "YouTube Streamy Awards 2022 Winners List: Charli D'Amelio, MissDarcei, MrBeast & Cooking With Lynja Among Victors". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  24. ^ a b Loeffler, Jeffrey (July 6, 2022). "Enter the Backrooms: five games that explore the new creepy internet sensation". TechRadar. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  25. ^ "The Backrooms Game for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on March 24, 2022.
  26. ^ Johnson, Astrid (August 16, 2019). "Reviews Roulette: The one with Tony Hawk on a unicycle". Rock Paper Shotgun (Video). At 24:57. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022.
  27. ^ Zamora, Gabriel (August 13, 2019). "The 15 Best Free Steam Games". PCMag. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022.
  28. ^ H. C., Luis (December 26, 2022). "Six of the Best Indie Horror Video Games You May Have Missed in 2022". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved February 12, 2023.
  29. ^ Wilson, Mike (June 30, 2022). "Escape While Staying Sane in Psychological Horror Game 'The Backrooms 1998′ [Trailer]". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
  30. ^ Smith, Ed (September 27, 2022). "The Backrooms has a new, terrifying survival horror game, out now". PCGamesN. Retrieved February 11, 2023.

Further reading

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