# Liminal Spaces > Liminal Spaces is a 2019 internet aesthetic of eerie, empty transitional locations like vacant malls and hallways that feel familiar yet deeply unsettling, originating from The Backrooms creepypasta. Liminal Spaces is an internet aesthetic built around photos of empty, transitional places that feel eerily familiar yet deeply unsettling. The trend exploded in 2019 after a 4chan post introduced The Backrooms creepypasta, and it grew into one of the internet's most recognizable visual movements during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aesthetic taps into a psychological sweet spot between nostalgia and dread, turning mundane locations like empty hallways, vacant malls, and deserted parking lots into something that feels fundamentally wrong. ## Origin The liminal spaces aesthetic traces its roots to a 4chan post from 2019. An anonymous user shared an image of a completely emptied-out HobbyTown store, showing nothing but yellow-toned walls, fluorescent ceiling lights, and damp-looking carpet[6]. A second user responded with a short creepypasta describing what would happen if you "noclipped out of bounds in real life," a reference to a video game glitch where players pass through solid walls[4]. The response described an inescapable maze of rooms with "the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms"[4]. This became The Backrooms, the single most iconic example of a liminal space. The concept of liminality itself is far older. The word comes from the Latin "limen," meaning threshold[3]. Anthropologists and psychologists used the term for decades to describe transitional states, like rites of passage or periods between life stages[3]. But the internet took the academic concept and turned it into a visual genre[7]. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film *The Shining* is often cited as a precursor to the aesthetic. The Overlook Hotel, with its long empty corridors and cavernous ballrooms, maintained exactly the kind of suspended tension that liminal space images aim for[6]. The "mono-yellow" motif in The Backrooms directly echoes Kubrick's use of the same color palette[4]. - **Platform:** 4chan (viral post), Reddit / Twitter / TikTok (spread) - **Creator:** Unknown (anonymous 4chan poster originated The Backrooms post) - **Date:** 2019 ## Overview Liminal Spaces as an internet aesthetic centers on images of places that should be full of people but aren't. Empty school hallways at night, deserted shopping malls with the lights still on, hotel corridors stretching into nowhere, parking garages without a single car. The images share a few key traits: artificial lighting (usually fluorescent), a complete absence of people, low image quality or compression artifacts, and architecture from roughly the 1980s through early 2000s[2][7]. What makes these images hit different from regular photos of empty buildings is the psychological tension they create. The spaces are recognizable. You've been in rooms like these. But stripped of their usual context, your brain flags something as off[7]. MIT professor Carlo Ratti describes this as a break from "spatial narratives," the story a given space tells you about what should be happening there[7]. When a school has no students or a stadium has no fans, the expected script falls apart. The aesthetic draws heavily on concepts like kenopsia (the eeriness of abandoned places) and anemoia (nostalgia for a time you never experienced), both coined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows[2]. Many viewers report feeling like they've visited these exact rooms before, possibly in dreams, even when they know they haven't[5]. ## How It Spread After the 2019 4chan post, liminal space content spread fast. The first major spike in interest came in March 2020, right as COVID-19 lockdowns began[4]. Suddenly, real life looked like a liminal space. Times Square was empty. Shopping malls were deserted. The pandemic made millions of people personally experience what had previously been a niche internet aesthetic[7]. Reddit became a central hub. The r/LiminalSpace subreddit hit over 500,000 members by November 2022[4]. A companion subreddit, r/LiminalReality, also attracted a dedicated following[1]. On Twitter, the automated account @SpaceLiminalBot, which posted liminal space images on a schedule, racked up over 1.2 million followers[4]. TikTok's #liminalspaces hashtag crossed two billion views[4]. The aesthetic branched into video content and interactive media. A found footage short film series set in The Backrooms pulled over sixty million views on its first episode[4]. Several video game projects launched using the aesthetic, and A24 announced a feature film set in The Backrooms[4]. Japanese director Genki Kawamura and Toho began developing another film based on the 2023 game *The Exit 8*[4]. The 2022 horror film *Skinamarink* and the Apple TV+ series *Severance* both drew from liminal imagery, with *Severance* creator Dan Erickson specifically citing The Backrooms as a visual influence[4]. The 2013 game *The Stanley Parable* was retroactively recognized as an early example of liminal space design in gaming[4]. ## How to Use Liminal space content typically follows a few conventions: 1. **Find the right location.** Transitional spaces work best: hallways, stairwells, empty malls, hotel lobbies, parking structures, school corridors. The space should be one that people normally associate with crowds or activity[2][7]. 2. **Remove all signs of life.** The power of the image comes from the absence. No people, ideally no personal belongings or evidence of recent use. The space should look like everyone just vanished[2]. 3. **Lean into the lighting.** Fluorescent overhead lights are the classic choice. Harsh, slightly yellow or green-tinted artificial lighting adds to the unsettling quality. Natural light tends to break the effect[6]. 4. **Embrace low fidelity.** Many effective liminal space images have visible compression artifacts, slight blur, or the washed-out quality of early digital cameras. This mimics the look of photos from the late 1990s and early 2000s, which adds a layer of temporal displacement[6]. 5. **Post without much context.** The standard format on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok is to share the image with minimal or no caption, letting the visual do the work. Some creators add ambient drone music or the hum of fluorescent lights for video content. ## Cultural Impact The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged the liminal spaces movement in a way few internet aesthetics have experienced. When real-world spaces like Times Square and major airports actually emptied out, the line between internet aesthetic and lived reality blurred[7]. Researchers noted that the pandemic "made people more aware of transitional spaces and the emotions they evoke"[4]. Academic attention followed. Alexander Diel and Michael Lewis of Cardiff University published research in the *Journal of Environmental Psychology* connecting the unsettling nature of liminal spaces to the uncanny valley effect, typically applied to humanoid robots but applicable to architecture that looks almost-but-not-quite right[4]. Peter Heft explored the concept in *Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture*, drawing on Mark Fisher's theories about eeriness and the "failure of presence" that occurs when expected activity is missing from a space[4]. Mili Kyropoulou, an assistant professor at the University of Houston's College of Architecture and Design, explained to *Popular Mechanics* that "the human brain is wired to make sense of the world through contextual associations," and liminal spaces break those associations in ways that trigger cognitive dissonance[7]. MIT's Carlo Ratti added that this dissonance, while uncomfortable, "can also spark creativity"[7]. The aesthetic influenced mainstream entertainment. Beyond the A24 Backrooms film in development and the Toho/*Exit 8* adaptation, the visual language of liminal spaces seeped into music videos, fashion photography, and advertising[4]. Related aesthetics like Dreamcore, Weirdcore, and Poolcore emerged as offshoots, each taking the core idea of familiar-yet-wrong spaces in different emotional directions[4]. ## Fun Facts - The specific shade of yellow in The Backrooms image became so iconic that fans call it "mono-yellow," a term also used to describe the color palette in Stanley Kubrick's *The Shining*[4][6]. - The original Backrooms image is believed to be from an emptied-out HobbyTown USA store, though the exact location was never confirmed[6]. - The term "noclip," central to The Backrooms lore, comes from a cheat command in id Software's *Quake* engine that lets players walk through walls[2][4]. - Sports architect Michael Lockwood told *Popular Mechanics* that truly liminal feelings require familiarity, saying the effect doesn't work for spaces like freighter ships because "my body doesn't relate to the thing"[7]. - The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows coined two words that became central to how people talk about liminal spaces: "kenopsia" (the eeriness of places left behind) and "anemoia" (nostalgia for a time you never knew)[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Liminal Spaces? Liminal Spaces is an internet aesthetic centered on photos and videos of empty, transitional places like hallways, malls, and hotels that feel eerily familiar yet unsettling due to the complete absence of people[4][7]. ### Where did Liminal Spaces come from? The aesthetic went viral in 2019 after an anonymous 4chan user posted an image of an empty store along with a creepypasta describing "The Backrooms," a never-ending maze of empty rooms you could fall into by noclipping out of reality[4][6]. ### What does Liminal Spaces mean? The word "liminal" comes from the Latin "limen," meaning threshold. In internet usage, liminal spaces are places caught between states, normally busy locations depicted as completely empty, creating feelings of nostalgia and unease[3][4]. ### How do you use Liminal Spaces? People share photos of empty transitional spaces (hallways, malls, parking lots) with fluorescent lighting and no people visible. The images often have a low-fidelity quality reminiscent of early digital cameras. They're posted on Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter with minimal captions[1][6]. ### Is Liminal Spaces still popular? Yes. As of late 2022, the r/LiminalSpace subreddit had over 500,000 members, the TikTok hashtag had over two billion views, and multiple film and game projects based on the aesthetic were in development, including an A24 Backrooms movie[4]. ### Why do liminal spaces feel so creepy? Research from Cardiff University suggests liminal spaces trigger an architectural version of the uncanny valley, where familiar places that subtly deviate from expectations create feelings of unease[4]. MIT professor Carlo Ratti explains it as a break from "spatial narratives," the expected behavior of a space[7]. ### What is The Backrooms? The Backrooms is the most famous liminal space, originating from a 2019 4chan creepypasta describing a maze of endless yellow rooms with fluorescent lighting and damp carpet that you enter by "noclipping out of reality"[4][2]. ### What is kenopsia? Kenopsia is a term from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows meaning "the eeriness of places left behind," describing the feeling of being in a space that was clearly once full of people but is now abandoned[2]. ### What is the connection between liminal spaces and COVID-19? The first major spike in liminal space popularity hit in March 2020, exactly when COVID lockdowns began. Real-world spaces like Times Square suddenly looked like liminal space photos, and the pandemic made millions of people personally experience empty public spaces[4][7]. ### Is there a Backrooms movie? A24 has a feature film set in The Backrooms in development. Separately, Toho and Japanese director Genki Kawamura are developing a film based on the 2023 video game *The Exit 8*, which uses liminal space aesthetics[4]. ### What is Dreamcore? Dreamcore is a related aesthetic that emerged in the late 2010s, using saturated colors and surreal image collages to create dream-like visuals. It shares roots with liminal spaces but leans more toward calm and nostalgia than unease[4]. ### Why do liminal spaces feel familiar? Most liminal space images depict places nearly everyone has visited: schools, malls, hotels, parking garages. The familiarity of the architecture combines with the wrongness of their emptiness to create cognitive dissonance[7][3]. ## References 1. [20 Bizarre Photos Of Liminal Spaces That Will Make You Do a Double Take | DeMilked]() 2. [LIMINAL SPACES, AND HOW THEY PLAY WITH YOUR BRAIN – Colegio Bilingüe Báltico]() 3. [O que é Liminal Spaces? Entenda a gíria sobre um medo compartilhado na internet | escreva.ai]() 4. [Liminal space (aesthetic)]() 5. [Liminal Spaces - Urban Dictionary]() 6. [Liminal Spaces - Web AestheticsWeb Aesthetics]() 7. [Liminal Spaces: Why Empty, Abandoned Places Make Us Feel Weird]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/liminal-spaces Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library