'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#41

Post by i_c_b » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

I worked on a couple of high profile FPS games during the era when designers really started trying to make these Potemkin village spaces off in the distance of levels to suggest larger realities (especially the 2000 shooter Soldier of Fortune).

I don't have anything interesting to say about how the backrooms phenomenon has evolved in recent years, but I do find it mildly amusing that I have a very different, but equally horror-themed, reaction to seeing "players" poking around in the original backrooms. Because it immediately gives me flashbacks to the feeling that players have found spots where collusion detection has had a nasty issue (because of bad geometry, or floating point precision errors in the physics system or a NaN, or players abusing the physic system to climb to areas they weren't supposed to), and now there's some awful-to-track-down bug to be fixed during a death march crunch time... all of which actually was a somewhat common occurrence during development at the time, of course.

Obviously, that makes me a lousy target audience for this art movement. But it's been vaguely fascinating watching people enchant, essentially, spaces that were experienced, from our side, as an very brittle (but useful!) optimization hack that we were all too aware could be easily broken.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#42

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

I never got really super into this subculture thing, or whatever it is, but I vaguely recall skimming things like a subreddit devoted to it, ages ago. I want to say when it was “starting” but then nothing ever really starts or ends. Definitely Pre-Covid though. Anyway, IIRC the focus was not on the horror, maybe a slight unease, but mostly the uncanniness.

I think this is just how things evolve. Creepy is a very strong sentiment that is somewhat aligned with uncanny, so it isn’t that surprising to see uncanny collapse into it over time.

But having spent a lot of time in empty classrooms, auditoriums, and hallways, waiting for students to show up, it’s more of a nostalgic feeling to me.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#43

Post by layer8 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #12

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

> I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. That's kinda more what the german concept of "unheimlich" is like. Even though it usually gets translated to English as "uncanny", it's more literally "un-homelike", when the familiar (home) turns unfamiliar (un-homelike) in an unexpected way. A common idea in that would be something like the discovery of a…

“Eerie” would be a good translation in the quoted context.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#44

Post by layer8 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Feelings of nostalgia can be evoked by things you never experienced first-hand, and that were before your time. It’s not uncommon. There’s also a connection to melancholy that I can’t quite find the right words for.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#45

Post by HauntingPin » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

wishfish wrote: post #29

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Day vs. Night are what makes the difference. The sprawling suburban office complex from the 70s was, like you said, just boring and a bit oppressive during the day. At night though, a sea of cubicles. Endless hallways. Nothing but blackness outside the windows. Lights are all on motion detectors so only your area is lit. And only lit for a time. Eventually you'd have to stand up to make the lights switch back on. And…

I agree, it's the night-time that makes places, particularly urban ones unnerving and/or creepy. I once worked as a courier, which sometimes involved delivering things to stores or weird ass storage buildings in the middle of the night. I hated those night-time deliveries. Even worse when I had to go through rooms with mannequins, made my skin crawl.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#46

Post by ethanmacavoy48 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

the akamai access denied page is a perfect, unintentional illustration of the topic. getting paged for a single bad regex in a WAF config that blocks legit users is its own kind of institutional horror

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#47

Post by carabiner » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

breezeTrowel wrote: post #19

stackghost wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Backrooms" don't just come from videogames It's where the concept originated.

The concept did not originate in videogames. The whole thing started from a 4chan post where someone posted a photo of a yellow interior. Then, in 2022, Kane Parsons created a viral YouTube video based on that post. You can see it here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=H4dGpz6cnHo . The video game adaptations all came later. Wikipedia has a good writeup here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Backrooms

90% of modern memes, internet culture, and therefore a huge proportion of current pop culture, originated on 4chan.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#48

Post by taeric » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

thunderfork wrote: post #22

amiga386 wrote: post #17

The article has a screenshot of the Stanley Parable, but misses an opportunity to reference Control (2019) which is much more directly influenced by the "liminal space" concept, and imagines a non-euclidian space called The Oldest House at 34 Thomas Street (a reference to the brutalist, windowless AT&T Long Lines skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, New York City). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74LLDhAhhI It also very…

The Stanley Parable definitely plays with non-euclidean and liminal spaces - the room in the screenshot being one such example.

Reminds me how much fun Superliminal was. Might have to get that another play through. :D

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#49

Post by munificent » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

> it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one.

My teenage daughter is really into this genre but has never actually been in a mostly abandoned 90s mall or fluorescent-lit business park office space herself.

But don't underestimate how much history bleeds forwards in time in various bits of cultural ephemera that can still be absorbed by younger people. She doesn't have much first-had experience with spaces with this vibe, but there is ample second-hand media of it and enough bits and pieces of it still in the real world for it to be both somewhat familiar and enticingly exotic to her.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#50

Post by taeric » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

stackghost wrote: post #5

WarmWash wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are dungeons just medieval backrooms?

Not sure if you're asking honestly or just going for comedy but, no. "Backrooms" are liminal spaces that exist outside the geometry of our world. It comes from video games, where if you enabled developer modes to let you pass through the normal level geometry, sometimes you'd find leftover/unused rooms and hallways that players cannot normally access.

This feels like a silly over emphasis on a naming that ignores how alike it is to so many things that came before. Don't even have to go too far back to get stories of people finding themselves in a fantasy world through a wardrobe.

How many stories were about hidden worlds below our own? Isn't even that much different from "turtles all the way." Heck, even the Minecraft movie played with a literal mine going into a magical world.