Melonland's thoughts on The Backrooms?

[khaos]

echoing a lot of the sentiments already stated, i absolutely hate how gamified it's become and so many people totally miss the point on what makes it scary as a concept to begin with. it's not the entities, it's not the levels, it's the sheer loneliness and isolation in a seemingly infinite expanse of the same area over and over and over with no clue how to escape. it's feeling like you're being watched and wondering if any sound you heard was actually someone - or something - else, or if you're finally spiraling into insanity. quite literally like the hallways of the Spiral in the magnus archives.

i do like kane pixels' analog horror series, i greatly admire how it seems to have innovated the found footage genre with well made cgi and realistic camera movements and it's especially impressive for how young he is. but ofc i do hate the fandom it's garnered with people who still manage to miss the point entirely.

people compare what the backrooms has become to the SCP foundation, and while yes, there are similarities, the SCP wiki actually has pretty strict quality control on what submissions get approved. i have yet to see anything of the sort with any backrooms wikis i've seen LOL

[Swiftpaw]

I like liminal spaces and the unsettling feeling of nostalgia they have, and they're something my system actually uses a lot as reference images when describing our headspace because it fits that vibe.

I just don't think it would work as a traditional horror concept is more the thing. Liminal spaces at least to me work better when you think about it for longer and let the feelings ruminate, and it feels the same with the concept of the backrooms. I don't see why there needs to be a goal or thing to avoid in the backrooms when the horror comes more of it being an infinite maze.

Liminal spaces never really felt like "no-clipping through reality" to me either. To me it's more the kind of places you might think about in a fever dream or when you're half asleep, or like the jumble of memories you get when you can't clearly remember something or even when having a flashback. If there's any fear, it's like the fear that you might have as a child where you know you're not supposed to be alone in an abandoned building, but you don't understand what you're actually supposed to be afraid of.

I'll always still support being creative on the internet either way. I think people being able to contribute their own lore and ideas in way of a wiki is pretty cool, and I realize a lot of it probably comes from kids. I've seen kids come up with their own interesting stories based on liminal spaces or weirdcore.

[mahoroa]

I dont really have anything to say about it that hasnt been said. Good idea but it works best as a simple post with a lot left up to interpritation. Every time people add more and more "lore" to it just ruins that mystery aspect. Something something less is more, something something what you dont see is scarier than what you would see.

Anyways, I genuinely wonder where that image used is from. Im assuming its an edit in photoshop right? Maybe someone took a picture of their house before they moved in/after they move out and edited it? It def reminds me of how our old houses would look before we moved in.

[rinni]

Oh i love the backrooms... so much

The original concept is something i find quite scary, as isolation is a phobia of mine. If i stay home for too long thanks to something like online classes or a period of laziness for lack of a more positive word, i start to go a little crazy!! so an infinite expanse of just... nothing but unpleasant architecture is quite spooky! the thought of a place like that also brings up so many questions! who created it if not a higher power? of course the backrooms fall into the assumption of the whole simulation theory, no? idk! i think so! it's fun to think about!:ohdear:

the idea of 'something else' existing in the backrooms was present in the original post, but the idea of societies and like... exploration missions and such kind of ruin the vibe a little, yes. but there's a place for interpretations like those, of course! it's all in good fun! like the multiple canons of the SCP project!

i love things like the backrooms also... House of Leaves is one of my favourite books! (though i havent finished my first read of it.. aha ha...) and!!!!! and!!!!! The Spiral from The Magnus Archives is one of my favourite things ever!! maybe the authors were inspired by the backrooms? Im not sure if the timeline lines up, though... and of course Myhouse.wad is quite enjoyable by extension of it being inspired by House of Leaves...

[BartTheZech]

I'll probably end up repeating what was said before, but hey I'll give my thoughts.

The Backrooms is basically a type of liminal space. Honestly, I think I enjoy the concept of liminal spaces more than Backrooms due to how the Backrooms have currently shaped up.

I see some people have refered to it being gamified. I'd say that's a result of people wanting to turn this into a worldbuilding project similar to SCP. The gamifying aspect came up as since the term "noclip" was used so people decided it should be similar to a game with levels.

Now I do enjoy worlbuilding, it is fun, but the charm of The Backrooms initially came from the fact that we didn't know what was in this world. If you got in you might be truly alone in these nostalgic liminal spaces for god knows how long. Perhaps there was something following us but we'd never know. _{And if someone knew they'd never probably make it out...}

Heavy worldbuilding was wrong for The Backrooms. Why? Rules were established in a space whose charm came from the unknown. People love to explore so it makes sense this would happen but it ended up making The Backrooms "known." The sense of unknown and mystery is now replaced by a few SCPs, well not a few I think it depends on the forum where people go crazy with it. If it was treated as a space where people simply wrote unconnected short stories the mystery and charm would be there with everyone having an individual take. But since everyone went far into efforts to connect everything to one overarching universe of backrooms it's hard to act as if its a mysterious space. Especially with people going as far as to establish multiple research factions.

It is honestly a bit odd that I dislike this though, I found the infinite Ikea SCP fun and that's basically what the backrooms became. An infinite Ikea. Though It's not all that odd or contradictory of a thought as I see it as respecting these as two distinct worlds. One, the SCP universe where this sort of stuff fits in and then The Backrooms which sadly was stripped of its uniqueness to turn into just another Ikea SCP.

Now, on the topic of liminal spaces, I dig those. They're just as is, oddly nostalgic photos that maybe will make you feel comfy or off. I've taken like two photos of spaces I found liminal, the feeling of being in those spaces honestly just feels cool. Especially when its a photo of a space at night ; p. Maybe a thread could be started for liminal spaces since those are awesome (if a thread hasn't been started yet, I haven't checked.)

[KatKing]

i dont agree with people who say that the monsters made it so the backrooms were not scary because they arnt empty anymore. to me, its no longer scary because they offer an escape.

the first time i heard of the concept, it made me deeply uncomfortable to think of being stuck somewhere like that, with no hope of ever leaving. that is what scared me. monsters offer death, a way out.

[virtue]

So the first thing I want to say is just a very heavy-handed defense of the Kane Pixels series, directed not at the original poster but at some annoying people I've seen online being gate-keepy about it, because I think its excellent. I have absolutely no love for creepypasta. I think the 'point of the original screenshot' is silly, and an especially silly reason to dislike Kane Pixels' take on the concept. The original thing was impossible to expand upon in the first place, it simply stands on its own, and that's okay. Kane Pixels' series instead derives intrigue primarily from the humans exploring, not from the environment they're exploring. Just like how people call it a "liminal space", it appears in the narrative to act as little more than a means to drive a wedge between the researchers. Yes, there are things in the backrooms that "defeat the point" of the original concept but my argument is that it simply does not matter because Kane Pixels is obviously not trying to tell a story about anything the original concept of the Backrooms was based on or trying to convey.

I adore Kane Pixel's Backrooms and am deeply excited to find where it goes, and I personally have a lot of hopes about that. I expect the story to be a commentary the excessive commodification of things beyond our control, like land and water. That would be extremely interesting and firmly have nothing to do with the original backrooms concept, and I think that is absolutely a good thing. (To be clear, Kane could prove me wrong and just completely miss the mark, and that would totally ruin his series for me, but for the time being, I don't get the impression that's going to happen.)

On the other hand, if we're talking about the peripheral fandom-ification of the idea where children have just endlessly added a million random things as different "layers"/"levels", or perhaps the peripheral media from content mills that takes advantage of the success of Kane's series and the general popularity of the concept? Yeah its stupid, awful, and I don't like it, but that would be boring to write a post about lol. I think though that you should just recognize... its a thing that children do for fun. The monsters are silly and its all meaningless and for fans of Kane Pixels or the original concept, it is probably unspeakably cringey, but I just say let kids have their fun. Its definitely frustrating though that it muddies the waters and makes it hard to acquire an audience for more thoughtful art on the subject.

Anyways, I overall agree with your original post besides your love for the original idea, I just wanted to make sure its stated for the record that I think in the sea of dumb bullshit, Kane Pixels has succeeded in creating something excellent out of it

[cursedcalendar]

i like them!! 
a lot of my art revolves around liminal spaces sooooo yea!

[Paprika]

Not much to add to this topic, there's a lot that has been told already. I prefer the Poolrooms but I dislike the idea of entities being there. Feeling alone in an empty space seems perfect honestly, no need of jumpscares or weird monsters. While I'm not a fan of it I respect Kane Pixel's work a lot, establishing a proper lore and all, congrats to them ! I noticed that if there's too many human elements in a -rooms" I tend to dislike it, I prefer bare walls and floor. The ones going full survival with people gathering and everything isn't my cup o' tea.

[Misanthropic Monster™]

it was a cool thing before it got popular and people started adding loads to it. scary part of it to me was always there being only monotony no matter how far you walk, not monsters hiding behind corners… that said it’s nice to see people coming together to make something.

I think I feel the same way tbh, I preferred the BackRooms before it got too popular. I sort of perceived it more as this quantum space, this inexplicable, non-Euclidean, space outside of reality... that you could 'no clip' into, but in a really quantum mechanical way. I prefer the idea of it being empty and made up of 'assets' from reality that don't make sense because it's more like a non-reality.

I felt it got a little contrived with the addition of creatures, and humans being behind the backrooms in more recent lore.

I actually played a BackRooms game recently that I felt was the best one (and I've played a bunch of 'em) as it captured the essence of what I feel the BackRooms is all about. I recommend it, it's called The Complex: Found Footage - it's a sort of walking sim horror experience but the portrayal of the BackRooms felt the most 'right' to me.

[VelvetSoul]

I am personally of the belief that the backrooms have changed significantly in a way I don't personally care for. I agree that the backrooms were interesting, and got most of their fear factor; from the idea of this place being "wrong" and unintentional. You weren't meant to be there, nothing expected you to be there. The way they're set up currently feels intentionally hostile both in the backrooms as an entity itself; and with the monsters that inhabit it. I've spent a lot of time looking over the wiki and found that there's a ton of monsters or "entities" that honestly just don't even fit the aesthetic anymore. I don't want to sound like I'm just some hater, to be honest I love creative works like this. I really enjoy when a bunch of people come together to create something, however I believe fully that when this happens the original concept can very often be lost. We see this in what happened with the backrooms. What was originally meant to be an unsettling location we weren't ever meant to know about, became not only an outright hostile environment, but the backrooms weren't even the main fear factor anymore; it became more about what was in them.

This might sound insane, but I honestly believe mascot horror is to blame for this. I know it's sort of an easy target to just point a finger at "Mascot Horror" and say it's bad or something. That's not my intention here, rather I believe that mascot horror did something to the accessibility of horror. Mascot horror created a sort of Horror-Lite genre for people who enjoy the idea of monsters and such, but don't actually enjoy the aspects of horror that come from anything more than cheap jumpscares and character driven story. Now I'm not trying to say that mascot horror is all bad or evil or whatever. I'm trying to say that what we saw was a sudden boom in the sheer amount of people who got into horror, but viewed it through a very specific lens of mascot horror. Now what happens when there's no mascot to assign to the work? Well, that doesn't work; the people who are used to something like FNAF see the backrooms and fail to recognize the inherent horror in the unknown.

As a quick aside, I'm not trying to say I'm better than those people or something. This isn't some "well I like REAL horror and they like little baby horror and they're wrong" kind of opinion, at least it's not meant to be. More specifically I think people who got into horror with the FNAF boom quickly latched onto things like creepypastas, again these have mascots; you have slenderman or jeff the killer or whatever. They likely migrated from that to something like SCP, which again has these sorts of bigger named characters, specific SCPs that are well known; essentially all of these things have some kind of mascot. The Backrooms for all tense and purpose is it's own mascot, but that's likely not how it was viewed.

To speak in kind of metaphorical terms, the horror of FNAF isn't the pizzeria itself, it's the animatronics in the pizzeria; and the Backrooms to many of newcomers was likely just a pizzeria with no animatronics. I can't even honestly fault modern mascot horror, I understand that the term is used to describe the idea of a "mascot" being the aspect of the horror and not that the horror itself has a mascot; but that is sort of what it has become. Which is something we've seen for a long time now, I mean just think about why we have characters like Jason Voorhees. Horror typically involves some kind of monster or some threat to your life that is frightening in an intense and in your face fight for survival. Compare that form of horror with something like the original Backrooms, or the poolrooms; or just liminal spaces. These places would kill you by simply trapping you in a place not intended for human life, or any life. They're not malicious, they're not even really alive or anything. They just exist and you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and pass through to somewhere you're not meant to be. This kind of horror has far more to do with the idea of isolation, the unknown; the idea that something made this place but we have no idea how or why. It's the same kind of fear a child has of the dark, they aren't actually scared of the "dark" itself, they're scared of what could be in the darkness, the unknown is what scares them because they're able to conjure ideas that are far more frightening than reality.

I don't think that kind of horror fits in as well with the pop culture of horror on the internet, this is likely for several reasons. The first and largest reason is that what we're scared of in that scenario honestly differs greatly from person to person. My fear might come from the idea of being entirely isolated, lost somewhere without any form of companionship; slowly losing my grip on my sanity as I question if I've been through these halls before. Meanwhile your fear may come from the idea that you know something or someone had to have built this place, it's far too man-made to be a natural creation; and this leads you to pondering who built this and what it was originally for. Someone else might fear the most mundane of survival worries, where would food and shelter come from? None of these things are great for making a recognizable and dare I say the work "marketable" horror. That doesn't mean it won't gain any traction, obviously things like liminal spaces are popular for a reason. However I feel strongly that without a "face" to the horror, it's difficult for people to talk about what exactly makes this horror, well; horror. Once we slap a monster in the labyrinth now we can market it, I don't even mean that in the sense of "selling a product" so much as just; getting the idea in front of people. If we say this random squiggly mess is "the monster in the labyrinth" now we have a clear thing to point to when people want to know why they should fear the backrooms. Ironically if you're not really scared of these monsters, the whole point to create them falls flat back to "well it's not that scary is it?"

But what if it was literally never meant to be scary, what if this change was in fact; intended to make it less horrific? Now I know I sound like some kind of conspiracy theorist on this one, but I've been around internet horror for quite some time and I've noticed something. We love, LOVE, to assign rules to things. I realize this last part here is all up in the air, it's totally assumption and just hypothesis about this all. I'm not trying to claim that this is fact or that I know more than everyone else or some such. However, I think the rules are there because of how these recent generations were raised, and more specifically; internet culture. This might sound insane but I really do believe that people are inventing monsters, and assigning them rules; so they can feel SAFER. Most modern generations were brought up in a culture (both online and offline) where if we do the right things, we won't be punished. If I follow all the rules, then I'll be safe; I won't get in trouble, right? So here comes FNAF to kick off a major mascot horror boom; it may not be the first to do it, but it's undeniable that FNAF basically jump started a whole wave of horror enthusiasts of all ages. What does FNAF teach it's players? Well first of all, this is a game; it's not a movie where the monster will absolutely kill at least a few people before getting stopped by the protagonists. Because it's a game, we have a "win condition" something we can do to stop the monsters. Normally, that comes in the form of a weapon, take for example Silent Hill; where stopping the monsters involves fighting them off physically. However in FNAF it's different, we don't have weapons; again in a typical horror scenario we'd have to just run away or something. However it feels more like FNAF wants you to know that there are rules at play here, systems you can follow to protect yourself. It's all a balancing act of knowing how your systems work and knowing how the animatronics behave. The only difference between a first time player and a veteran speedrunner of the game is that the vet isn't going to have any trouble managing their power, knowing when they're in danger; and ultimately they're going to be calmer for it.

It's that last part that I want to draw attention to, the idea that if you know all the rules; you can still engage with the horror while not being horrified by it. I was recently going through some VR Horror stuff with my partner, she seemed very worried about me because I was visibly "not doing well" with it. I had to explain that, horror should scare you; that's the point. She kept asking if I wanted to stop, and I had to keep sort of explaining that, if I didn't want to be scared, I wouldn't engage with horror in the first place. Now this isn't to say that people are engaging with horror wrong or anything. Again I'm not some elitist who thinks I've got it all figured out and that my opinion is the right one or something. However I don't think people view these things as horror anymore, I don't think the way people engage with horror necessarily has to be in a matter of being scared by it; but I do believe that's the core of good horror. Even if you think the horror monster is really cool, or if you have a fascination with the location the horror takes place in, you should ultimately have some sense of dread or fear about it. After all, in the end that is sort of what makes it horror. I think a lot of people enjoy the idea of horror like the Backrooms, but they don't want to actually be scared by it; and how do you make the unknown familiar? You assign it rules, you organize it; you name things. Almost word for word everything you explained in the rant, having the "levels" all named, having recognizable and identifiable monsters you will encounter. It removes the unknown, and makes it a world of the familiar. To further this point, if you check the backrooms wiki; almost every single "entity" entry has a whole protocol list of how to handle encountering it. Now you know what to do, what not to do; how to protect yourself. You are essentially becoming that "veteran FNAF player" but for the Backrooms. So now you don't need to be scared, you know all the rules; you can follow the rules, and you won't get in trouble.

I really do believe this comes partly (but not majorly) from a cultural background of how we were brought up, but I also believe it's majorly because of what I said about FNAF. The thing that spearheaded MANY people's first real dive into horror had systems and methods to it; things you could understand and ultimately follow to not get jumpscared. It taught people that the only reason people got killed by Jason was because they weren't following the rules well enough, it told them that horror could be thwarted with logic and rules; and when you give them the power to make those rules you're going to see what happened to The Backrooms. As a sort of "closing thoughts" I personally believe that a lot of what made the Backrooms so interesting was it's lack of hope. The same way a horror game doesn't give you a weapon to fight back against the monsters, the Backrooms gives you all of nothing to get yourself out. It's unfamiliar, it's not meant to be; and you most certainly weren't supposed to end up here. However, you did and now you need to decide if it's worth it to you to even try to find a way out. That gets me for a lot of reasons, it makes me think about how things would be there; what would I even do in that situation? I personally really enjoy that version of the backrooms more than what we have these days, but I fear we can't undo the collective work of the internet at this point; and I'm not sure if I would even care to if I could. In the end I just think of the pop culture version of the backrooms as another interpretation of what it could be.

[ayn_sweeet]

I love the original concept. Not the new, tiktokified, brain-rotted shit.

The initial idea was simple: a plain, yellow room with endless corridors stretching into oblivion. It was a psychological horror concept that tapped into our deepest fears of isolation and monotony—being trapped in a dull, featureless space with no escape, no food, no water, no other people... and no way out. Just the unsettling knowledge that you are utterly alone.

People started expanding on this idea, adding monsters and levels. While I can appreciate the creativity behind these expansions, it’s the original premise that I truly love. There’s something profoundly unsettling about the idea of being stuck in a never-ending, mundane environment that plays on our psychological fears.

I dislike how people seem to think that the only way something can be truly scary is by adding monsters and/or gore. I miss the days when horror was more about the mind—when the scariest thing was not what lurked in the shadows, but the creeping dread of being trapped in a place that feels both familiar and alien. The original backrooms captured that essence perfectly, and it’s a shame that it often gets lost in the noise of more sensationalized interpretations.