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The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

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Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#71

Post by magic_hamster »

I was sort of expecting an article called "the backrooms of IA" to tell me some interesting things about the unseen parts of IA. But it's still cool to see where the backrooms image came from. Presumably the building is still around and the hobbytown store seems to be in business as well.

Some videos I found of the store from 2014 mention it's the source of the "backrooms", so maybe this wasn't such a huge mystery to some people. Funny how something mundane like a hobby store in your town could become a world wide meme phenomenon.

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#72

Post by dither8 »

houseplant wrote: post #60
WantonQuantum wrote: post #57

“ However the original, anonymous user stumbled onto this photograph, it appears it was taken from either the Wayback directly, or the Wayback Machine crawled the same site the user had found, and kept that webpage’s preservation for over 20 years.” Something people used to do is to use search engines to find images with file names that indicate they were from a digital camera. You could find all sorts of interesting…

I recall a thread years and years ago about a guy who found an abandoned digital camera in the woods, only to take it home and extract the photos from its SD card, and as everyone poured over them, they began noticing odd figures in the trees and so on. That's the kind of fun group activity I love about these mysterious things

You can actually do this with YouTube. By search for MOV001 etc.

Mental Outlaw did a video demonstrating this a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Ho_KDPi_U

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#73

Post by _cenw »

zerocrates wrote: post #68
frob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a YouTube video covering the discovery process. Ultimately, one person found it, but they were part of a wider team piecing together many parts of a puzzle, including outdated phone image numbering schema. I found it to be a worthwhile summary that doesn't really assume the viewer has much previous knowledge. https://youtu.be/-1EKIIM3ShI

The Cybershot is a point-and-shoot digital camera, not a phone. Though Android does still use the DCIM folder, that whole basic structure, for compatibility with things that are looking for photos on drives, SD cards, etc. I think Sony phones even still use the DSC filename prefix for their photos.

Maybe you want to re-confirm that. In the late 2000s Sony Ericsson had a line of phones that had a focus on (then) high end integrated cameras called the C-Series, the C standing for Cybershot.

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#74

Post by firecall »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #57

“ However the original, anonymous user stumbled onto this photograph, it appears it was taken from either the Wayback directly, or the Wayback Machine crawled the same site the user had found, and kept that webpage’s preservation for over 20 years.” Something people used to do is to use search engines to find images with file names that indicate they were from a digital camera. You could find all sorts of interesting…

There is a subreddit for Open Directories!

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#75

Post by PUSH_AX »

dither8 wrote: post #72
houseplant wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a thread years and years ago about a guy who found an abandoned digital camera in the woods, only to take it home and extract the photos from its SD card, and as everyone poured over them, they began noticing odd figures in the trees and so on. That's the kind of fun group activity I love about these mysterious things

You can actually do this with YouTube. By search for MOV001 etc. Mental Outlaw did a video demonstrating this a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Ho_KDPi_U

Good luck “searching” for anything on YouTube in 2024..

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#77

Post by mikae1 »

firecall wrote: post #74
WantonQuantum wrote: post #57

“ However the original, anonymous user stumbled onto this photograph, it appears it was taken from either the Wayback directly, or the Wayback Machine crawled the same site the user had found, and kept that webpage’s preservation for over 20 years.” Something people used to do is to use search engines to find images with file names that indicate they were from a digital camera. You could find all sorts of interesting…

There is a subreddit for Open Directories!

There's an even more fitting (inactive) subreddit for filename searches here: https://old.reddit.com/r/IMGXXXX/

Here's a list of prefixes to search for:

    IMG XXXX
    MVI XXXX
    MOV XXXX
    100 XXXX
    DSC XXXX
    SAM XXXX
    HDV XXXX
    102APPLE 
    IMG XXXX
    FILEXXXX
    GOPRXXXX

Re: The Backrooms of the Internet Archive

#80

Post by b112 »

Thorentis wrote: post #52
beastoftheweast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until last month, the earliest known post/repost of the Backrooms image was an archived 4chan post from 2018, but it was believed to have been taken in 2012 or earlier based on the filename. So people have been looking for earlier posts/reposts of the image for years in an effort to uncover its origin. During the recent successful search, the searchers trawled 4chan archives for early-2010s posts with similar imag…

Wait so, the Internet Archive was not involved at all in finding the original, but since the image exists in the archive, IA have written a blog post claiming to be crucial to its discovery? Seems like taking credit for something they didn't do to be honest. They didn't even mention the Tweet in the blog post which was essential to finding the image, which makes me think they want that part overlooked.

They most certainly did not take credit, where did you see that?! I think this accusation is unfair.

In fact they say For some, this is a proof that “with enough eyeballs, all problems are shallow”. That doesn't sound like "we solved it!".

Instead, they're using this to highlight how vital archives are. It's a valid point, and there's nothing I see wrong with it.

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