Saw Backrooms this weekend and it was very good. I've never seen anything backrooms related before and was surprised by how much I liked it. It made me think about a lot of things. Mostly, it reminded me of Everything at the End of Time and what happens to a memory the more time passes.
When looking at it from a neurological perspective, 'memories' as we know them are complex patterns of very specific neurons spiking at very specific times. When neurons are not in use for a while, they degrade, and degrade the memory in the process. Even if you only experience something once, that memory can be 'incorrect' depending on your state (emotion level, stress level, etc) at the time of experience.
Backrooms demonstrates this concept very well in my opinion. A memory is great right as you experience it. But, over time, as you have no way to revisit the exact same memory ever again to reaffirm the correct neurons, incorrect neurons fire, creating misrememberances that create more misrememberances until it becomes nothing. THAT is what is scary to me.
Humans degrade, and their neurons go, no matter what we do to help it. We cannot reaffirm something we cannot re-experience. As you live, you look upon your past, your own personal backrooms of everything you've ever experienced remade and remade and remade every-time you remember it. Your memories are something that doesn't exist anymore, and we have a nostalgia for its nonexistence, creating beauty in its imperfections. Safety in its wrongness. It's what you know as the path of least resistance.
The backrooms are representations of our past memories in all its imperfections. We can revisit them whenever we like, take comfort in them, but they will never be the same as experiencing the real thing. They are figments of the past, warped by time. As people, we can all relate to this horror of reality that is our own broken memories. We can get lost in them. It's sad and scary, but it's real.
The warped memories of the backrooms being a societal uncanny valley (I am calling it this due to the similar feeling of 'This should be right but feels wrong') is so perfect. I wonder if it is similar due to how our brain processes humans vs places as concepts. Maybe that uncanny valley of memory is why dreams can be so scary sometimes (purpose of dreams is to consolidate memory).
In conclusion: The backrooms are scary due to the horrifying nostalgia of something that doesn't exist anymore. Your memories being replicated by SOMETHING (backrooms themselves?) into physical form, and its worse than you could ever imagine. Nothing is as you remember.
It creates a feeling that the backrooms are an entity desperately trying to understand and copy humanity. I know nothing of backroom lore, so maybe it's just an unconscious dimension that exists without intent.
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