June 25, 2026
The most interesting class I took in college was Architecture & Society to fulfill an entry-level arts requirement. It discussed the way in which buildings shape our interactions with each other. While the class mainly focused on the grand designers—Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, and the like—it left me with a lens with which to view public spaces. Simultaneously, I think about A Pattern Language idly, as a way to structure our built environment. Following from these influences is a general sense that we should make paths which result in the ends we want as easy as possible, such that they become paths of least resistance. If one would like people in a living situation to become bonded, opportunities to do so (common cooking, central zones, etc.) must be afforded for convenience. If one would like to do the opposite, afford them conveniences such that tasks are best done alone.
Placing this within the concept of the Backrooms requires a brief analysis of modern construction. Retail stores are designed to be efficient for tenant changes to maximize rental profits, causing them to exist with a lack of individuality. A store can be stripped down and redesigned in days. To do so requires both a level of standardization and a lack of design not seen in past buildings, which often had more personality (think room placement, lighting, etc.). This homogenization makes a store in Dallas, Texas feel remarkably like a new development in Cleveland. In the same vein, as houses became investment opportunities, standardization became a way to reduce costs and increase resale value such that the investor may recoup their money. Everything must be palatable rather than unique. This flattening of the built environment is the driver behind the popularity of the Backrooms, which deals in liminal spaces—otherwise known as spaces which feel dream-like. This is because our brains strip detail from what we see, revealing the common patterns between that which we observe daily. This portion of the argument is likely marginal, but I would like to extend it to what these placeholders do to us.
The Backrooms concerns two characters: a very divorced man and his therapist. There is an attempt to flesh out these characters (they have details which are not shown onscreen), but they are minimal, with little constructing their selves or worlds. This, too, is a result of standardization. If one experiences nothing but standard experiences and homogenized landscapes (the infinite successive strip malls of suburban Houston come to mind), individual differences resolve into a grey mass. Life circumstances may lead to different outcomes, but this starting point results in the detachment of the main characters toward life, as seen in the therapist’s reaction to the destruction of her childhood home and the man’s apathy toward life. That the Backrooms are imagined, born out of the imagination of those in the world, reveals this mental flattening of the built environment. Yes, they are memories of memories, but the world is operating on an additional level of greyness not seen in past times. In such greys, one is left with only their internal worlds to create joy; this is what the man retreats to.
Of importance is that the Backrooms originates out of the Internet. Above, the flattening of space was evident. However, the Internet flattens memory in the dimension of time. Infinite scrolling fills time with more of the same. Though each piece of content is different, it resolves to grey nothingness at a bird’s-eye view. If our memories are homogenized as well, ourselves must become so, resulting in the disaffection both the therapist and the man demonstrate. Just as the Backrooms gained popularity in part due to the commonality of the world built around Zoomers, the lack of identity in many raised on digital interaction results in the same effect. That one may easily insert themselves as a character in this world requires a lack of stable identity felt by those victim to this double flattening.
As an exercise, ask yourself what you did last Tuesday. If you can recall last Tuesday, check your screen time on that day and compare the proportion of memories of that day to the proportion of time you spent on your phone. This is the blankness of time I discuss here.
Facially, the Backrooms is a wonderful weeknight horror movie! But its true strength stems from its place as a cultural artifact of those raised on ersatz places and memories. Its popularity reflects the homogenization of our minds.
I’ve written extensively on the harms of the Internet—see “What Is Social Media For?”—so rehashing solutions is repetitive. However, we must also consider how the very environments we live in, down to the doorknobs, contribute to this flattening. To fight this is much more difficult, easily leading to the phenomenon of the insane going off the grid or the hippie-ness of the ’70s. I find some sort of Situationist walking, or a critical lens of how our buildings affect us, to be a moderate solution, such that we may recognize negative outcomes and take the road less traveled as sympathetic solutions on the individual level. If the Backrooms are to be dreamt by us, we ought to improve our dreaming.