Read on Desktop with dark mode off for best experience :)*
The world is kindaaaa on fire. At least that’s what it feels like watching the news.
It feels pretty helpless, right?
Especially when the outcome impacts your life tremendously?
I’ve felt powerless. You’ve felt powerless. We’ve all have felt that powerlessness and helplessness before.
But if we were to only feel it for a second, it feels exciting, no?
When you have been jump scared by a close friend or when you thought you sent a draft email by accident, it felt good knowing that you actually didn’t send it or know it was your friend and not a real threat.
That’s the feeling a horror film genre can construct. Watching a fictional world go through threats that are real to them but not to us.
But sometimes simply watching a film to feels like you are in the fictional world where that threat is considered real, is not enough to be entertaining.
One of the first looks into the Backrooms in the film
Entertainment does not last for long and it comes in different forms. Perhaps you have already watched many horror films and has grown accustomed to the fear and no longer feels that excitement you once felt. A solution could be, you wish for a way in which you could be active members of that fictional world. Is that possible? Yes. Aside from horror films, there are other forms of media that may keep audiences on their toes and satisfy that itch for uncertainty, one such media is the world of alternate reality games.
Creepy pasts lovers of the Backrooms going to the new way to interact with the film (Pixabay)
How could they do that?
Simple.
The audience is given ways to interact with the film beyond watching it on the screen. For creepy pasta lovers of the Backrooms, that method of interacting with the fictional world became a reality on Jan 7, 2022.
But unlike the real world, at least the Backrooms is not real, *right?*
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The Backrooms help us avoid the pain that comes with acknowledging the truth of how insignificant one's actions are in the grand scheme of a situation. By presenting itself as a game and allowing the player to explore the painful fictional world. Thus, denying its merit in the audience’s reality.
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A YouTube video was uploaded, titled “[*Found footage,](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=u1PphN2G_Q3tKOWe&v=H4dGpz6cnHo&feature=youtu.be>)”* and it showcased the Backrooms concept in the format of a short film, at first glance. The concept on the other hand, was first conceptualized on a 4chan board in May of 2019 with a single image and message reading:
*Original Backrooms Photo*
`“if you’re not careful and you noclip 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”` (“History - the Backrooms Info”).