Why Is the Internet Cursing at the Backrooms? Inside the Viral Profane Parody Phenomenon
By Alexander Ross
The original concept was simple, eerie, and quiet. On May 12, 2019, an anonymous user on 4chan's /x/ paranormal board posted an image of an empty, fluorescent-lit office room with dirty yellow wallpaper. The accompanying caption laid down the lore: if you accidentally "noclip" out of reality in the wrong areas, you end up in the Backrooms, trapped in roughly 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms smelling of moist carpet.
The internet spent the next three years expanding that premise into genuine horror. In January 2022, a 16-year-old creator named Kane Parsons uploaded The Backrooms (Found Footage) under the handle Kane Pixels. The video collected more than 60 million views, caught the attention of production studio A24, and sparked an entire subgenre of VHS-grain horror. Viewers fell in love with the suffocating silence, broken only by the hum of 60Hz light fixtures and distant, inhuman shrieks.
Then came overexposure. Crowdsourced wikis cataloged hundreds of distinct "Levels," invented friendly entities, and introduced survival mechanics like "almond water." The liminal terror of an empty void mutated into an overstuffed roleplaying game. By the time mainstream video games brought the setting to younger audiences, the original fear had curdled into familiarity. When audiences are no longer scared of an existential nightmare, the only natural reaction left is irritation.
Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.
