The Backrooms
what it means
Started as a single unsettling photo with a caption about "noclipping" out of reality. It grew into one of the internet's largest collaborative fiction projects.
A fictional endless maze of empty yellow office spaces, and the horror genre built around it.
the origin story
From a 2019 4chan thread where a user posted a photo of an empty yellow room with an invented backstory.
It expanded into wikis, level hierarchies, video series and a feature film deal, largely written collectively by strangers. It's the clearest modern example of collaborative internet horror since Slender Man, and it made "liminal spaces" a mainstream aesthetic term.
in the wild
That empty corridor in the hotel basement.
Full backrooms energy.
How many levels are there?
Hundreds. People keep writing them.
how to use it
- Describing eerie, empty, liminal spaces
- Discussing collaborative internet fiction
- Horror and aesthetic conversations
- Professionally
- Where the horror reference is unwelcome
- As shorthand for anything merely empty
related terms
receipts
Community feedback
keep scrolling
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