bathtimefunduck

please pronounce carefully

[that-house]

partially-managed mental illness is so fucking funny i'll be sitting around doing my job and suddenly think "wow i hate myself" and immediately get confused because, like, that's not TRUE! i love myself so much. who are you to talk to me like that

[unicafavorita]

You think you're alone in the room, but are you really?

As an architecture student, I was fascinated by how Backrooms turned architectural psychology into horror.

A lot of people say there wasn't enough horror because there wasn't a monster constantly chasing the characters and because there's no jumpscares, but I don't think they realize the monster was the architecture itself. And also, it's a psychological thriller and borderline horror. There's a difference. Grow up.

The film uses things we rely on to orient ourselves in space like landmarks, hierarchy, rhythm, daylight, scale, and spatial memory, then removes them or distorts them.

1. That's why Casino's don't have windows. It keeps you occupied and lose track of time. They literally distort your perception of time.

2. That's why shopping malls have looping layouts so you're forced to explore around. Like IKEA, you're psychologically “led” through a curated sequence, minimizing shortcuts and maximizing exposure to products.

3. That's why theme parks have carefully hidden service areas, controlled sightlines, immersive “world bubbles" to make you mentally stay inside a narrative environment where outside cues are eliminated.

But with Backrooms, it's manipulation of space and time and everything. All your senses are manipulated. Every room feels slightly familiar but never fully readable, so your brain keeps trying to build a mental map and failing.

What makes it scary isn't what is in the space, but what the space does to the mind. Humans constantly construct cognitive maps to understand where we are, but Backrooms breaks that process.

The circulation goes nowhere, the repetition erases reference points, and the environment sits in that unsettling zone between recognition and alienation. It creates disorientation, isolation, and paranoia without needing anything supernatural.

That is also why the concept went viral. Liminal spaces, dreamcore, whatever you call it. It feels endless, familiar yet unfamiliar, and deeply convincing in its emptiness. The suspense comes from thinking something else must be there with you, even when there is nothing. That uncertainty is the horror.

Adding paranormal elements often weakens it, because the original fear already comes from space itself, not from what might be inside it.

Hell, even the shot of Mary's "neighborhood" fucked me up because it looks exactly like the ones we see online and how it looks unoccupied.

Backrooms is really just architecture and human perception turned into a mechanism of fear.

I also like how Backrooms turns architecture into an allegory for mental health and the human mind, where spatial disorientation mirrors psychological unraveling.

[captain-price-returns]

[grumpypedant]

I think a lot of people have trouble understanding transgender issues because they try to see themselves as trans, but come at it from the wrong direction. e. g. a cis woman tries to understand transness by going, “what if I felt like/wanted to be a man” when she should be approaching it as “what if I, a woman, was so easily mistaken for a man that I had to pretend to be one”,

And I think this is something to keep in mind and to explain away when trying to get these matters across to people who’re new to the idea.

[urie]

stop calling it a girl dinner and call it by its formal name: Fend For Yourself dinner in an ingredients household

[queer-reader-07]

[just-another-regular-dude]

[hotvampireadjacent]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[beemovieerotica]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[echojulietfoxtrot]

Hello, I work for a large moderately evil corporation and for at least five years now I have to sign a yearly thing to say I will never ever have one of these devices in the same room as me while I work.

My large moderately evil employer takes it for granted that these things are spying on me at all times, and you should too.

[its-funnytwittertweets]

[janokenmun]

[presidentofthelipglossclub]

the thing so many people don't understand is that the reason wikipedia is generally not accepted as a source has nothing to do with accuracy. wikipedia is (generally) extremely accurate! the reason wikipedia isn't allowed as a source for school is because it's a summary of other sources. wikipedia has correct information, but it gets that information from OTHER places, which are either primary or secondary sources, which lends them credibility that wikipedia technically lacks.

so yes, wikipedia is a GREAT resource to learn new things! but if you want in depth, specific, and creditable sources, don't use wikipedia! use wikipedia's cited sources!!

[gaybichon]

i think i found my new favorite artist on twitter

(source)

[gaybichon]

👆 me

[stickandthorn]

I’d die on the hill that “stranger danger” is a deeply unhelpful mentality to have. “Ooooh everyone is out to get me they’re all gonna perpetrate harm that’s actually more likely to come from someone I already know. I better never talk to anyone in my community who I don’t already know, just to be safe. I’m sure there are no other biases interwoven with this mentality” like oh my god human traffickers do not just randomly spawn in every parking lot. You don’t have to go solo hitchhiking across the country but you also don’t have to live in fear that every guy on the street is the knife man who’s gonna get you. Like have situational awareness, yeah. But most of the time the guy on the street is not knife man he’s actually just a guy on the street and he’s probably pretty chill, and you’re driving yourself crazy by living in a constant state of unnecessary fear.

[lakemojave]

You know that whatever character did those problematic things isn't like. Real, right?

[lakemojave]

You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?

[tpwrtrmnky]

Tbh I think the "but data centers are important infrastructure, not just AI" talking point misses that like

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

That is the problem.

[lost-carcosa]

[theconcealedweapon]

With socialized healthcare, you pay for other people's healthcare.

With capitalist health insurance, you pay for other people's healthcare AND rich people's profits.

There's an easy solution that keeps everyone happy. Just have socialized healthcare, with the option to set aside additional money to give to your favorite rich person. Then, those who only wish to pay for other people's healthcare can do that, and those who wish to pay for other people's healthcare and rich people's profits can do that too.

[quasi-normalcy]

Sometimes i think about the brigs on Star Trek and how they have forcefields that have to be kept running constantly and that crap out whenever the ship takes a hit, allowing the prisoners to escape; and how this technology is just inferior in every possible way to just, like, having a cage with bars, but you can't just do that because Star Trek's in the future and everything needs to be a given value of "futuristic".

And then I think about computers with no ports or DVD drives, computers that only have Bluetooth functionality for their keyboard and their mouse, phones with no jacks or ear buds and etc.