YOU ARE ALONE, lost, and submerged to your waist in a swimming pool. Your memory escapes you as you meander aimlessly into the inner area with wall-to-wall tiling. The next chamber is a pool, and the next one is after you pass through a doorway drenched in light. Shit. Even though your fear is increasing, you quickly locate a little ledge where you may exit the sea. (color by number)
There isn’t time to unwind. Your spine tingles when you hear a shadowy splash out in the distance. Something vanishes around the corner as he tries to gain a good view. You go to stroll along the ledge. The splashing is becoming louder. A jog develops into a walk, which develops into a sprint. As everything goes dark, you stutter, stumble, and smash your head on the damp tile. It everything begins to come flooding back as you awake to the smell of chlorine. You’re attempting to get out of the Backrooms.
What Do Backrooms Do?
The Backrooms is a fictional location. Vice claims that the idea first appeared on 4chan in 2019 with a solitary unsettling picture of a fluorescent-lit home. It’s challenging to capture the original photo’s spirit since the internet responded to it strongly. The scene, which is often referred to as an office, is devoid of furniture and people. The observer sees into a room that is unoccupied and covered with subpar brown carpet via an entranceway covered in mismatched, yellow wallpaper. Another open passageway is partly visible, but there are obstructions in the way.
Online commenters imagined a location outside of our world, a deserted labyrinth with soggy carpet that could only be accessed by sliding through reality’s gaps, in reaction to the picture. This reality-breaking practice is often referred to as “no-clipping” in video game culture. There are varied landscapes, possible creatures, and survival ratings on each level of the surreal area.
The Backrooms is regarded as a creepypasta and is often compared to Slender Man from about 2010, however the idea existed before that. Many online users develop an obsession with a terrifying central concept. They produce reams of fan fiction, extending the horror narrative to fit their own vision and deviating much from the original objective. Amateur filmmakers’ viral films stimulate more public interest.
Earlier last month, I came upon the Backrooms creepypasta while having trouble sleeping. I was given the recommendation to watch “The Pool Rooms (Found Footage),” a YouTube movie by Jared Pike. A cameraman wades across shallow water in the footage. An imagined interaction taking place inside of his work is described in my first two lines above. The artist from New York City’s Instagram feed is a haven for rooms that are partly buried.
Pike cites Kane Pixels as an inspiration in the video description. A Californian 16-year-old visual effects artist goes by the internet handle “Pixels.” Over 26 million people have seen “The Backrooms (Found Footage),” his most popular video from earlier in 2022, on YouTube. Pixels is a well-known personality on the lively r/backrooms subreddit, and he merits the acclaim he gets. His most recent “Backrooms – Pitfalls” film, with its sleek, high-quality production and use of motion capture from the Rokoko Smartsuit Pro II, is actually disturbing.
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The majority of users of the short-form video platform TikTok enthusiastically ingest numerous conspiracies and frightening legends, and the Backrooms creepypasta has found another warm home there. In 2020, the skinwalker myth from Native American culture was popular on the site.
A popular TikTok using altered Google Earth video focuses on Japan and shows a strange sinkhole inside of a big structure with a flying robot nearby. According to insiders, the Japanese structure shown in the video is genuine and is from a former water park, but Google Earth does not allow you to have a look inside.
the effect of lone gamers
What I refer to as the “lonely gamer effect” is what distinguishes the Backrooms from Slender Man and other previously well-known creepypasta. The estrangement is more fully expressed. One no-clips into the Backrooms, completely cut off from reality, and finds themselves alone. The Slender Man was a colossal, imagined creature that stood on top of the actual world. If Slender Man is after you, you could attempt to flee for aid, but you are shut off from civilization and must deal with creatures by yourself in the Backrooms.
The public’s infatuation was probably fueled in part by repressed emotions from a multi-year epidemic that encouraged social isolation. The Backrooms was one among several sources of inspiration for the workplace thriller Severance, according to Dan Erickson, creator and showrunner, who spoke with Input.
