My bad guys

I always preferred the idea of there being absolutely nothing in the backrooms. No monster to chase you, no exit to find, only Immortal loneliness.

I feel like liminal horror is hard to maintain. We naturally try to build on the idea but the more we understand the more it takes away from what actually made it scary.

this feels like what happened to creepypastas in the 2010s. What i loved about OG creepypastas were it was just scary stories with a photo or two to accompany it. Then I'd say that young online artists from Tumblr and DeviantArt took over and attempted to turn characters like Jeff the Killer and Slenderman into a cute ensemble cast. Kids/teens started creating OC characters and writing non-horror fanfiction. There was also a LOT of lude fanart/fanfiction created in some parts of the fandom, it really took away from the creativity Creepypastas originally had. This had real world implications on it's young fanbase when two children in America stabbed their friend in the name of Slenderman so that they could "live in his mansion". The mansion was a fanfiction trope used in a lot of newer stories about the characters. Children having so much influence on a fandom usually dumbs down the source material, which makes sense since kids ARE dumb, lol.

This is something I like to call the "Slenderman Effect" What started as something unnerving and with a vague but terrifying concept gets beaten into the ground mercilessly and milked dry until tons of unnecessary "lore" is added and the scare factor is totally gone What made it scary to begin with is dead and gone This is also what happened to things like Siren Head, because once kids get their hands on it and youtubers learn they can milk this audience they'll destroy it without caring about the original concept or the creators behind it

It’s sad to see horror slowly mutate into something so… empty. Games try too hard nowadays to be scary without knowing what scary is. Scary isn’t a convoluted plot or sharp teeth, scary is a mood/atmosphere that any game can create when the correct elements are used.

I went on VR chat and was browsing the games that had been made there. Found a backrooms game that seemed pretty popular. Pretty well designed. Some guy offered to guide us through so we were down, and then the children arrived. 45 minutes of non-stop SCREAMING down the mics every time a pixel shifted.

The same thing happened to the SCP Foundation (Something I'd never really bothered with as it's so convoluted) EVERYTHING that ends up on the internet that starts out as something vague and scary, winds up being a boring, overly complicated lore-fest. I was fine with the first few creatures, other things are going to "clip" into the backrooms after all, but once "Levels" started cropping up, that was it for me. I think the whole "Liminal Space" thing doesn't really seem recoverable to me, it's just people putting up any old photo of an empty room now.

In a weird way, I think the building on and lore-ifying of the backrooms is just a testament to how solid the original post was. It was so simple, so totally hopeless, it was horror in its purest form. It was less of a place and more of a distilled feeling, defined by its emptiness and hopelessness. When it went "mainstream" of course people tacked on new layers, creatures, and exits, because the *concept* of the backrooms is so compelling that it captured peoples' imaginations, but the *feeling* that it was meant to evoke was so uncomfortable that people tried to drown it out. The mainstream backrooms is like a fantasyland that people have invented in an attempt to distract themselves from the horror that the backrooms *really* is.

It just got too popular and attracted people who didn't understand it. What made the original one creepy was how simple and mysterious it is, and now, with all the lore and a billion levels and monsters who are only really scary to children, the essence is lost

I honestly agree. When something gets too popular and kids join it is ruined. Especially horror.

It's the same problem with the SCP foundation everyone thinks they can just add anything to the lore and think it works with the initial concept. The idea that there is even "levels" in the backrooms completely ruins the point of the backrooms.

The saddest part is knowing that any really exciting horror concept that fascinates the internet in the future will be watered down and ultimately ruined in this same way. It happens every single time.

I find it ironic that the horror of the Backrooms was ruined by... basic human nature: humans don't like when they don't understand stuff, that's why they either imagine explanations or add something comprehensible for them. They don't understand the idea of such loneliness in the Backrooms, so adding enemies or monsters let's people wrap their heads around the topic. Edit: But the whole topic is a double edged sword: do you expand the universe and allow "outsiders" to enjoy it so the community lives for much longer at the cost of it becoming like the Backrooms nowadays, Or you gatekeep the fandom to keep it as close to the original as possible at the cost of it never expanding and staying the same till it dries out.

Honestly the worst part of the original backrooms was the implication of spooky monsters. The scary part of the backrooms was that you were outside the intended playspace of reality. Have you ever noclipped out of a game map? Curiously enough the devs don't tent to place much out there, especially not enemies. The terror is in the infinite isolation. At least when you're lost in a forest you know there's a theoretical way back home. If people knew you were out there search and rescue will be deployed within a few hours of you not returning, and you can potentially just walk in a direction and find a road (bad idea if you're lost in the forest, btw. Just try to call 911 and stay put.) but the infinite isolation of the backrooms, left alone until you die of hunger or thirst, that is existential horror. I feel the idea of anything else alive back there with you just undercuts that a lot.

The backrooms died as soon as the first entity came in, it killed the whole idea of the Backrooms. It's intended to be a scary mysterious place where the observer does not know what could attack them, but now it's so heavily documented that it's literally disgusting

The backrooms electricity bill must be insane. Especially in this cost of living crisis

Personally, I really like the idea of the backrooms being completely empty. No monsters, just you and an endless series of yellow hallways and corridors. It's the most normal, mundane setting you could possibly imagine, there might even be faint office noises in the background, except that it never ends and never changes.

The scariest part of the backrooms to me was you just randomly getting put into it and slowly starving to death. Like for the majority of us, we would just wander around until death. That is way more scarier than getting warped to some stupud level where you are chased by floating emojis

I am an old guy and I have to say that the concept of the back rooms and how people react to them is a bit strange and fascinating to me. I wonder if the original images and videos only seem creepy to people of more recent generations? Perhaps because their experiences are so content filled and saturated. They are less likely to be alone, bored, or left with their own thoughts. I believe that when I was young, being exposed to real places like what appear in the early back rooms media was more common, they just seem like the normal back hallways of any office building or mall I worked in over the years. In my late teens and early adulthood I was often completely alone in malls before they opened and after they closed (I even spent the night in a mall occasionally because the weather was bad and I could not ride my motorcycle home). These empty echoing spaces seem more comfortable than frightening to me. It would be interesting to see someone research how people of different backgrounds react to backrooms media. 😀

That spiteful kids' channel parody breathes life into me, I am OUT HERE for that raw, unadulterated resentment.

I remember when I loved liminal spaces and the backrooms. It was a very new thing and also super cool to see a place outside of our reality. But then little kids started flooding the fandom and destroyed it. They started making random things, and being sorta rude to people. You cannot keep kids out of everything, but when a kid sees something they like, there always is a chance they’ll ruin it.

The idea of Backroom itself is about existential dread, and fear of knowing that you're possibly the only one person trapped in some strange maze that you can't ever get out. It's simple, it's mysterious, but it works like a charm. And Kane's version of it just expand the original version without never adding anything else than necessary. Just lore about a dangerous unknown entity, expedition and research on how Backroom is existing in the first place. When people started to expand it by adding 'levels' and somehow, 'human colonies' of all things, it has been ruined. It has become the second SCP fandom at this point; "Oh, people thought that this level is dangerous and crazy? Wait until I add my own level called '69420 TotAL cARnaGE' with human colonies and local mosters waging war against one another for eternity!" It's just dumb.

The backrooms as a concept was really something new and refreshing, it invoked a kind of melancholic feeling inside of me. Its like looking trough the world with a childs curious eyes where everything is new and mysteriuos to you and the world hasnt lost its magical charm to it. The world is so big relative to you and the line between youre fantasy and reality is not as clear as when you grow up. But this reincarnated feeling of wonder and urge of exploration also reminds you of the time that is lost, the world we once thought of as mysterious will never return, and whats left is an empty feeling. Its like exploring a lost dream that has risen up from the deepths of countless other forgotten dreams, and now, for a moment, you can once again explore the long abandoned halls where only the sound of youre footsteps will echo trough the endless halls. And when you leave, the rooms and their flickering buzzing light will once again sink into the oblivion of youre mind.

I think it all began with trying to make "entities" that inhabit the backrooms. For me, just the fact of being lost and alone in a massive, seemingly endless labyrinth of nonsense architecture, trying to survive and find an exit with limited time to do so (before your frail human body crumbles), was enough to make an amazing horror experience. Instead, like you said, the focus got shifted to pointless entities. Nothing wrong with trying to add some spice to the backrooms, like some kind of animal that evolved being there that you need to watch out for or something like that, but please don't over explain the entity to the point we know it's favorite air freshener scent. Keep it simple, therefore scary.

i like to think it has four different versions: 1. The raw concept. The idea of being trapped, alone in an endless hell 2. The community-made world with a whole level system 3. Kane Pixels’ version, with a full fleshed-out world 4. The child mind drugs

What's happening with the genre right now is truly heartbreaking considering that I've been an active member of the community since early 2020. Back in the day, everything was simple. Small, unknown youtube creators who had an interest within the original concept of the backrooms were making absolutely phenomenal content. KZfaqrs making detailed analogies of certain levels of the backrooms which were actively being made by a small group of individuals. Listening to their deep and interesting voices made those videos entertaining and fun to watch. Slowly as time was passing, the community had created such a beautiful fandom, but sadly everything doesn't last forever. Ever since kane posted that one video of the backrooms, it felt as if the original community was being overshadowed by this imaginary version of the backrooms which he had created. Even though the video which he had made was absolutely breathtaking and delivered a whole new point of view, it killed the traditional backrooms community. Ever since children got involved with this, I had no more hope left.

As a kid I agree with this. I’m a super big fan of the backrooms knowing a lot of levels. And to see the backrooms just get turned into a cringe hub for every content creator just makes me sad. Most “backrooms” vids are just Gmod nextbots chasing vids or a new level added to the overwhelming stack of levels. I just want it to go back to the original, where there was only 2 levels and no entities, but now we have to deal with tons of dumb community made levels and entities that just ruin the whole point of the backrooms, to feel creepy and liminal. And this pretty much happens with everything that gets popular. It gets popular, tons of drooling kids find it, and then they make cringe unfunny memes about it, and then the thing loses popularity and the process repeats. It’s just sad to see most things just get found by 4 year olds and not any people with a brain. It’s the same with KZfaqrs. Once they get too famous they do anything to get views and start getting mad at people who even inspire off of them. You just have to wait until the kids are gone, or find something else that isn’t controlled by kids and enjoy it until the kids find it.

you should talk more about the phenomenon of children taking over horror genres. I think it’s an interesting subject that needs to be talked about more

At this point every internet famous thing can be explained as -Thing is born -It starts being known -A little fandom is born -People expand the thing with their own ideas and stuff -It starts to grow big -Game Theory makes a video -A bunch of kids appear -Hijinx ensues

Your impression of the kids’ KZfaqrs’ back rooms videos is all I need in order to imagine those videos. Your impression made me groan, and that just makes you really good at acting.

The main issue with the backrooms/liminal spaces being ruined is that it was scary due to the uncanny feeling of the unknown -- "where the fuck i am?" -- but that is quickly ruined when someone adds a 10 page description of each room and 'levels' with some stupid-ass monster that looks like a Indonesian bootleg SCP. This was one of my most fav things -- i could never bring myself to even call it a "theme" since it felt more to me than that, i was so connected to this (i know, i sound like a hippy lulz). I really liked the liminal spaces for as long as i could rember. As someone who has been evicted 17x growing up, it was always uncanny to move to a place and see no sign of life -- nor pictures of peeps on the walls, no furniture, nothing -- even tho i just came from a place that made it obvious someone live(d/s) here. I absolutely hate when peeps, who don't know what makes this thing good, make this thing bad. RIP to yet a another internet space that lost all potentional for stupid reasons -- just like SCP, Creepypastas, and so on. Sorry any bad English ^w^

The scary part of the backroom is the fact that it's just a massive structure like incomprehensibly large and you're lost in it, everything looks mundane and normal but it's not, also you're just alone by yourself, no one to help no one to find, you're stuck.

The backrooms: scary because of the fear of the unknown Internet: Let’s make everything known

It happened to Slender, it happened to Creepy Pasta, it happened to SCP, and now it has happened to the Backrooms, of all things. I can't help but notice a pattern

It feels.. refreshing to see someone talk out about what’s happening to the backrooms community, and not just support it while pocketing the cash for themselves. I’ll be sure to follow your content.

I'm fine with the monsters, I'm fine with the levels; but what really annoys me is the whole society thing in the backrooms. Having all of these survivors and factions with their own governments somehow living normal lives in these hostile environments is what really takes all the horror out of it for me.

In a way, not only did they SCP-Fied the backrooms, they basically SCP-Ikea-fied the entire concept.

Kane pixels took a massive crap on the concept by adding monsters that are just screaming stick figures

This man just covered everything I hated about what used to be my favorite horror concept. now that's what I call quality content

I remember when the Backrooms was new, my dad actually had a nightmare about it. He's not a horror movie fan, and has never been unsettled by horror films or shows or books. But something about the Backrooms and how real and understandable the concept is just hit it right. In fact, whenever I mention the Backrooms to him, to this day he shudders and gets an unsettled look on his face. I think I tried to explain about the other "levels" and locations to him once, but he wasn't interested at all. To him, the scariest thing is just those empty, unknown hallways with awful décor, just stretching out endlessly. It truly does work better when it's as simple and mysterious as the original concept.

I honestly don't mind the idea of there being different entities and an endless amount of weird levels. I actually admire the creativity from it, but it goes downhill for me once youtubers start turning the backrooms into a cesspool filled with childish characters and memes, turning the whole concept into an unfunny joke.

I kind of like to imagine the monsters in backrooms are just hallucinations. To me being trapped in an infinite labyrinth with buzzing lights is already creepy enough. Concerning the rest of the backrooms, it's really fun to follow the lore that has been collectively written, but it's just not horror anymore.

I completely agree. The OG Backrooms were genuinely creepy, *because* it was so simple. The simple idea of wandering through an endless maze of empty officerooms is pretty creepy. But then they added monsters and complex lore, and I just lost interest. EDIT: also fun fact: I've actually known about Kane Pixels even before he made the backrooms series. He made some really creepy fan films about Attack on Titan's ending

The fact the fact that people go out of their way to explain and make stuff up about the back rooms in order to understand it goes to show just how terrified people are of the unknown

A lot of the charm of Backrooms I feel has to do with isolation and being separated completely from people you love, family, friends, and so on. I for one have a fear of claustrophobia so it works on me the most, and I feel that's what strengthens it: no "entities", no jumpscares, no "levels" - it's like waking up and finding yourself locked inside a deserted shopping mall and no means of getting out. I'm not bothered by people expanding on the concept, and to be honest I think it's cool, but to get the most out of it is that it's literally just... You (the one who fell in) and nothing else: there's only one way out unless you happen to find a miracle. Frankly though I kinda see Backrooms now as-- the entire world is a GMod server and we are all merely users, lol.

The absolutely powerful Atmosphere of Purgatory The Backrooms emenates paired with the Isolation you eventually feel is what makes it so horrifying. I've never lived rural, but I imagine living super far away from anyone and letting your mind wander, or do drugs just to fill the void of the empty fields has a similar feeling. But The Backrooms have that sense that something SHOULD happen, because it's in an office building. But nothing does. And that's what's so irritating to the psyche. Adding characters and enemies destroys the feeling of dread, which is to be expected by mall kiosk youtubers.

I’m a mom, I love kids, I love when kids get creative. I hate when people water down adult horror for them, like the KZfaqrs they mentioned. I hate when the “kid-version” of a horror/general Internet thing becomes the “popular” version. And that’s not to say kids don’t deserve horror, they do. But Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark didn’t make itself stupid for children. It scared them the way it scares us, AND it was age appropriate. And I still enjoy a lot of those stories to this day.

Something I really appreciate in Kane Pixels’ interpretation of the backrooms is while there are monsters present, they aren’t really the main focus in the series, rather the uncanny nature of the backrooms as a whole

The fundamental problem with Liminal Horror is that at a certain point, you have to let it die for it to become good. It can't be developed upon (too much), otherwise it ceases being about the Liminal Space. I feel like Kane struck the perfect point of developing upon the concept while keeping the concept still terrifying enough. In one video there's an entity hunting a guy, but in most of his videos it's about the infinity of the whole thing, the trap of just being there. We know the videos are connected, but we can't fathom how big the place actually is, so those scientists that managed an entrance to the place could be thousands of miles away from the guy that was getting chased in the first place. But since the place noclips into itself, and you can fall into a hole somewhere and be at a different point of the whole place entirely instead of where the fall should logically take you, those same scientists can find that tape. The connection between the videos exist, but within the lore itself it's flimsy at best. The problem is, how do you keep the concept of an infinite place that never changes appearance interesting? You add things to it. So games, and other lower tier creators, went the easy route and added "challenges". More monsters. They made infinity finite, because you keep finding thresholds (ironic, considering the concept is exactly about that) in those creatures.

I always found the thought of nobody being able to find me in this no clip space so scary. Nothing chasing me, just never being found.

Same thing happened with SCPs. Silver lining is most of those kids lose interest as they grow older, and the ones who stick around start to get a sense for what the core appeal of the premise is.

I was telling everyone similar things when The Backrooms only started to try to be "the new SCP". It just lost most of its creepyness that way

The original concept played upon the loneliness of it and the almost claustrophobia of everyday things. I remember back in the early 2000s, I was working on the third floor of an office building. The first and second floors were unused. It was quiet and dark on those floors. Since they were mostly unused, facilities rarely went there to do any cleaning as it wasn’t needed. One could easily let the mind wander and create all sorts of horror from that scenario alone. That’s part of what made the Back Rooms so fascinating.

This went from liminal spaces to some weird sci-fi overcomplicated mess

I don't think it's just about children. The scramble for making everything into something marketable is definitely what contributed to every horror series' demise well before kids KZfaqrs learned about it.

One golden rule of horror "Less is More" Things always seem to get less interesting when they are filled with rules and explanations

I have this thing in me where I'd cover parts of my screen everytime I'm watching horror stuffs, and yes I got quite a faint heart. The moment you brought up about the children section and clips though, I can watch them all while being unfazed. It sorta baffles me how some would just put a completely normal looking characters into this sort of atmospheric area and call them scary..

09:07 nice one X'D (Bless you for having a piece from the OFF Soundtrack in the video. That game deserves so much more love)

I remember seeing people say there were only 10 levels in the backrooms. And personally, I liked it, since you were still always alone. Once the backrooms got popular though, people started putting entities and, the worse addition in my opinion, outpost and groups of people in the levels. Since the whole idea of the backrooms was that YOU WERE ALONE. And it really destroyed the scare factor that it had. And nowadays, the backrooms just feels like a format people use to create whatever content they want and gain some views. Rip backrooms May 2019-February 2022

I cannot fathom how accurate and painful to watch that parody you did of kids KZfaqrs is and it have me physical pain and cringe how right you are to what’s happened on KZfaq. One of the reasons everyone I knew and me drifted away from back rooms stuff

I had a rare encounter of a city limital space. Back when I was a milk delivery driver during the pandemic, they just announced the quarantine. I still had to work but damn... downtown Portland is strange when it was on lockdown. No cars, no people, nothing. It was like I was on GM_City... a Gmod map

People really need to gatekeep things more

I agree like 90% and made a satire animation that subtly made the points about backrooms content losing the plot and being very watered down and sprinkled in for search term recognition a while back, which may have accidentally just stoked the shitstorm further as it got a lot of views many of which may have been children who didn’t understand the implied message. However my one disagreement is that I don’t think it’s “ruined,” because the past good stuff was never erased, and I don’t think the kiddie stuff halted the progression of it as I think the whole allure of the backrooms is that it’s the pure unknown and infinite and you are never safe from no clipping , which means it can also be whatever you want it to be, and if that happens to be sonic amogus in backrooms fort nite poppy playtime then so be it.

I'm the developer of the game "Enter The Backrooms" and I completely agree with this video. My game released about a year and a half after the first wave of Backrooms popularity and about a year before the Kane Pixels stuff, which helped me stay motivated to make the game for its own sake, not for popularity. The Backrooms had enough time to build on the concept with levels and entities, which inspired me to make my game in the first place, but hadn't quite gotten too complicated, diluted, or saturated yet. After I released the game I continued updating it just for the fun of it. As soon as Kane Pixels did their series, my game took off in popularity since, at the time, it was the only fully-realized Backrooms game. Unfortunately, with Kane Pixels' series (which I quite enjoy) came a huge wave of game developers wanting to capitalize on a trend as opposed to making a game that tried its best to accurately reflect the lore of The Backrooms. If you look on Steam now there are TONS of Backrooms games, many of which don't even have the most basic element of The Backrooms: (virtually) infinite generation. Don't get me wrong, some of these games are well-made, but many of them are quick things thrown together in a game engine without much thought, and that reflects what most Backrooms content is now: loose ideas tossed together with the intent to make a quick buck. My game has a bunch of technical problems, I'm definitely not going to sit here and call myself a master developer, but like the original Backrooms, it has one thing that many other games don't: genuineness - and I think that's why The Backrooms are ruined. There's a point where something gets so big that the content surrounding it is just heaps of people wanting money or attention, and unfortunately, that's where The Backrooms is now. What's worse is these heaps of content overshadow the diamonds in the rough, that is to say the people who still have genuine intent with their work. I wonder how many fascinating Backrooms stories and experiences are out there that I'll never discover because they're buried too deep under everything else. All that to say I thought this was a fantastic video about something I dedicated a lot of time and energy to. Great stuff! :)

Backrooms peaked with the yellow office area with the POSSIBILITY of an entity.

You know.. personally speaking here... I am amazed at how correct you are about the timeline for such a (once perfect) creepypasta before it fell. As a person who was one of the first fans of the backrooms, even before "entities" even existed in it, I can 100% agree with everything you said in this video. You captured the stages SO perfectly, while still not biasing against ANYONE specifically. Thank you for making this.

I feel the same on this. I miss the backrooms being mainly focused on solitude and the unknown, because now it’s pretty much like the SCP foundation with how perfectly documented and known pretty much everything is

The backrooms don't need monsters to be scary. Just the concept of being stuck for eternity in endless empty halls, rooms, and spaces, never seeing your family, friends, or another human being, is scary enough.

I feel the oversaturation of the backrooms is kind of what killed it. You explained it well enough in your video. The SCP Foundation is kind of a mess currently, but they still kind of self-regulate through the community. A lot of the SCP's have really high-quality writing that makes it feel as if you actually stumbled onto a piece of hidden media that's not mean to be seen. A lot of the SCP's aren't really great, but the great ones do raise to the top and as such, a lot people first exposure to it are these really well written stories about anomalous objects. The SCP Foundation isn't as quaint and small as it used to be, but I still find it intriguing and go back to it every now and again.

Online fanbases would be so much better if kids never used the internet

The thing that made backrooms scary (atleast in my case) were never monsters that got introduced and they never will, but the feeling of being alone, the feeling of emptyness, just like what makes space scary, the sheer size, the fact its enourmous and fully empty of life, you dont know if something is there, or not. When you look into space you see repetitive black void with stars here and there, and in backrooms you see same walls and unending corridors, Thats what made backrooms scary, the fear of uncertainity, the fate of being killed by a monster isnt scary, the fate of being alone, forgotten and stuck in unknown place that is outside of your understanding is scary. Kane did beautiful job showing this in his animations, he perfectly captured the size of the backrooms. And as for every single popular thing, it will be ruined eventually by kids. Kids dont understand the concept of backrooms, its not about, going to another level running from anything at this point not even survival, there is nothing you can do, you dont know if theres food or water, just aswell you could just die there, without a chance to fight for your life. Entities or monsters, whatever you prefer to call them, are unneeded addition, they do make it more instresting, but its not about backrooms being intresting, in original post, there was nothing intresting. But I will give a point to them for writing some good entities, There was one (dont remember the name) that was just a survivor going insane, which is indeed creepy, and the skin stealer, the fact that your only friend here could not be even human is scary, and the only moment you realize that is when the skin start to rot on him. On the end, the thing that made backrooms scary is the mystery, the feeling of being doomed, alone and forgotten, while being in endless maze of same rooms and corridors, not knowing whats behind the wall. Its the mystery that gave it that special taste, the secret ingrediant on making the horror, the real horror. (Why did you read it all😭🙏)

I think Kane Pixels "explanation" of the backrooms is actually really creative and suits it, experiments with quantum tunnels/saving billions in infrastructure/something going horribly wrong. It's one of the few instances in horror where the explanation gives you just enough material to chew on and make sense in concept without tarnishing the original concept or horror.

As a part time liminal space photographer I completely agree. For me the scariest thing is not the fact that there are monsters but the feeling of familiarity and the unknown. Having an infinite maze of the same boring things is actually way more creepy than it sounds.

And now they are replacing stuff in the wiki with their own non cannon stuff

Wow I actually forgot that the carpets were supposed to be moist

As harsh as it sounds, I think the whole "Ruined by kid audiences" thing is pretty accurate. Kids don't have the same level of understanding, heck I was like that with FNAF back in 2015, but it really pains to see something actually interesting to lose all of it's original meaning because people milk it with unoriginal stuff

I feel like the real fear of the backrooms can be perfectly described by the “Squidward gets trapped in white space” scene from SpongeBob. I’d personally be terrified if I was in the same situation.

The funniest experience I had with the backrooms was a comment on a video talking about the implications of a place like this. It was asking the video poster to talk about the 300th and above levels where you can find enclaves of people being able to survive in this area. This commentor enthusiastically talked about other levels and the mechanics of how to get around and explore it further. It sounded like a playground at that point. Kane's first video is unfiction perfection. His "expanded lore" of it being a sort of government or corporate program gone wrong was cool, but it sadly lost its luster because of the over-explaining.

The Fnaf effect. But what took years to kill Fnaf takes months to kill modern indie horror (if it’s not dead in the water)

One thing that really drove me nuts was how much of the backrooms was based off the idea of creepy liminal spaces and things we've all seen, but firmly established that it was purely coincidental and just happened to look like things in "the frontrooms." Like, if your levels look like a suburban neighborhood, an infinite wheat field, an office space, or an indoor pool, and your entities look like combine harvesters, dogs, smiley faces, Satan, or torii gates, at least give us a reason. Insisting that there's no connection to the real-world look-alikes and that it's a coincidence because the backrooms are infinite is just really, really lazy.

The backrooms downfall began as soon as monsters took the forefront of the equation. The concept of being stuck in an endless maze of rooms where essentially no other form of life exists aside from yourself is horrifying. You will die a slow and painful death due to starvation. Okay, so now we add big scary loud monsters that chase you down the halls and remove any and all subtlety! In all fairness, as described in the original 4chan post, there *was* something living in the backrooms, but it was simply "something." It was scarier to not know what it was, what it looked like, or what it would do.

I was vr chat once and loaded into a dark empty version of the backrooms with no one there except me… I left instantly 😭

Fear of the unknow is very powerfull. Many popular horrors ideas/games trive initially on it, but when they continue to be explored by people or their creator, that initial fear vanished little by little, but thats kinda inevitable. Its up to the creators to reinvent their series, be it take it to other directions like fnaf slowly drifting to focus on lore or keep the mistery of the world showing very little.

I think it's the fact that younger audiences couldn't understand the effect and "horror" of the backrooms being completely empty, so when people added monsters, young people jumped on that stuff.

I like the idea of the monsters all being hallucinations; I personally really think the monsters ruined the liminality of the backrooms, but viewing them as hallucinations kind of builds up the idea of 'you're so lonely you'll imagine anything else existing in the space with you.'

i’d like it to be a more of entities that don’t attack you, that aren’t dangerous but are just there to drain your sanity. like scp 372

2:55 this reminds me of nothing more than the part of the PSO2 Vegas map where in eqs sega placed the train boss last time they gave us a seasonal easter eq...minus the ceiling

I totally agree man, Kane Pixels nailed the Backrooms horror and he only needed one entity, and then also gave that entity a very good origin story that’s still being told. Beyond that though? The hundreds upon hundreds of dumb levels is getting incredibly old. Edit: Also, you’ve earned a subscriber man, I thought not many felt this way, but It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.

I love the backrooms as an endless maze with separate areas or “levels” that have no monsters, no humans, no life in general, just pure emptiness and some levels being so quiet you’d hear your organs functioning inside you, levels so confusing and twisted that you’d get lost for years.

ill always prefer the backrooms being a liminal space instead of a offshoot scp

the thing about the backrooms is that it sort of implies that life is a simulation and isn't real, since you can just clip into it.

the real issue with most horror stuff is that it gets described too much. The whole idea of the thing you are facing being already documented makes it less terrifying, even if it still results in your death. Stuff being documented also means that someone _has_ seen it and _has survived it_ and _escaped_ it in order to make it public.

Kane Pixels is the only person that's keeping the Backrooms intact. He doesn't put silly things like other game characters or quirky dancing people in it. He keeps the backrooms like it should be, mysterious and dangerous, and I give him the utmost respect for it.

You know what ruined the backrooms? Gatekeepers. It used to be a space that was almost impossible to get into, now it's full of tourists. But the gatekeepers, man, they ruin everything.

The backrooms became the "super smash bros" of internet horror. Everyones here.

I feel like this exact same problem has killed the SCP Foundation as well. Several years back, I got into SCP because it felt like a much more refined version of creepypasta. There was more structure to it. Many of the entities, objects, or anomalies were interesting and unique. A lot of the entries were pretty self-contained; they didn't rely on other material and could stand on their own feet, so to speak. But then SCP got super popular, and now it seems like every new entry is either some absolutely derivative bullshit or stuff that's way too big. By "way too big," I mean that it seems like every new thing has got to be some reality-ending, universe-destroying, infinitely-powerful god or being, or something that is somehow the backstory of a dozen older SCP entries. It's over saturated. Everything just has to be bigger, more insane, or try to explain a bunch of stuff that works so much better when it ISNT explained. It drives me nuts.

Kane pixels is such an awesome guy, his work is so cool, and has its own lore, it's great. It's really sad that people ruined it like they did.

When too many people have an idea, an ingredient and put it in the pot then the soup eventually turns into a disgusting goo. It happened to SCP foundation and it happened to Backrooms too. Some things are simply better with a smaller community following it. It's simple...

I am glad you said what you did about the monsters, they addition of concrete beings vs the original vague "something is here."