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This month, Rylie Revercomb writes about liminal spaces and how the weird trend originated.
Liminal Spaces
Liminal Spaces
By: Rylie Revercomb
By: Rylie Revercomb
Have you ever seen a picture, or watched a video, and thought that you recognized the place? Maybe it’s an old playground, or an eerily abandoned room, some old play place, a road at night, or something that just looks familiar but… off. This is what is known as a liminal space. These places are normally portrayed through pictures on the internet-- pictures that depict spaces that are eerie, forlorn, and often surreal. The question many people have been asking is: where did this trend originate from, and why are these pictures suddenly popping up everywhere? The answer is perhaps just as interesting as the aesthetic itself.
It all began with an internet post, just like every trend. This post was a bit different, though. Unlike most viral trends, which start off big, on a decently well-known platform. Liminal spaces first became popular thanks to an anonymous post on 4Chan with an eerily empty photo and the caption of “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.” Pretty creepy, huh? This post was the first of many regarding the backrooms, but the internet didn’t really pick up on this trend until a video was released a while later.
Original Backrooms post on Reddit
The Backrooms by: Reddit
Image of "The Backrooms: Found Footage" by Kane Pixels: YouTube
More Backrooms Images by Kane Pixels: Youtube
The video was by a young cinematographer, who was just starting to get into the swing of his skills. And what better way than to harness a worldwide trend and post a video on YouTube? So that’s just what he did. With a lot of creative thinking, some eerie background music and audio, and some incredible special effects, he finished the video and posted it to his channel on YouTube, called Kane Pixels. The video was titled, "Backrooms: Found Footage". This is when the internet really started going crazy. The video blew up, gaining over 54 million views on the streaming platform, and harboring a lot more attention from new fans. People in the comments were supportive and excited about it, intrigued by the idea of “no clipping” into this strange place. In fact, someone named Soundofsilencegg commented, “This really captures the essence of the backrooms; the liminal atmosphere, creepy design, everything. This guy literally revolutionized the backrooms.” That was how the world became used to the aesthetic known as ‘Liminal Spaces', all because of one guy and his YouTube dreams.
While the aesthetic might have started off as geared specifically toward the endless office spaces of no-tone yellow, the topic gradually began to expand to include a wider range of topics. Things like “The Poolrooms” started popping up, which is a subgenre that includes pictures of weird, endless, and eerie pools. Other pictures started being added to the collection, one by one, by one, by one, until an entire aesthetic was created. People started adding to the original backrooms video and photo, adding their own lore and levels, which the community unanimously agreed on, while others just stuck to finding creepy photos and saying that something felt off about them. Either way, this trend started to take over the internet and was developed into games and more videos, taking the world by storm.
A Picture of the "Poolrooms" by Deviant Art
Slide Liminal Space by Reddit
Alas, all good things come to an end and, after a while, the Backrooms and Liminal Space aesthetic started to die down. Kane Pixels stopped uploading videos for a while, and the entire trend just seemingly disappeared for a bit. Until after the CoronaVirus Epidemic. With people stuck in their houses, with absolutely nothing to do, they began finding old trends and fads resurfacing. One of those being the backrooms. It started popping up everywhere; YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, you name it. The liminal aesthetic was back, and it seemed to grab our attention even more forcefully this time. Almost creepy, huh?
That’s the story behind the liminal aesthetic, what it is, and why it’s suddenly everywhere. The interesting topic is attracting the attention of various new fans who are interested in the aesthetic. So, next time you see a place that is just a little off, maybe a bit too empty for a normal room, or it just has a weird feel, you might have stumbled upon a liminal space.
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