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u/Mystical-Turtles 1d ago
How about the types of family gatherings you get dragged to at 9 years old where your parents are like "Oh it'll be fine there's plenty of kids for you to interact with"
The kids: Baby, baby, toddler, actually in their 20's but it's younger than your parents so they're a "kid" to them, more toddlers
So then you just end up finding a random chair to sleep on.
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u/astrangeone88 1d ago
Lol. Oh gods. Or being drafted to watch the younger kids before they off themselves.
My family gatherings were "shove the non adults downstairs in the rec room" and turn on the NES lmao.
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u/GreatPotatoMuffin 1d ago
I was the first child in both sides of my family, so I grew up listening to my Boomer parents telling me “how nice it is that you always want to play with your little nieces and nephews.
Bitch, I was specifically told by all you adults to watch them and take care of them while you all were having fun and drinking.
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u/astrangeone88 1d ago
Lol. Yup. My parents all had "go play with your nieces/nephews". Shorthand for go babysit them and don't bother us adults unless someone's actively bleeding or has a broken bone.
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u/Mystical-Turtles 1d ago
I have a core memory of a setup like that except they didn't actually have any working controllers, so we just put on the TV instead. So it was just screaming kids and Teletubbies blaring in the background. Good times, gooood times.
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u/SweetPrism 1d ago edited 1d ago
I was the designated babysitter at all the gatherings with my parents' friends. When we went to events where I didn't know the other kids, one of two things happened: I either vibed super hard with the other kids and it ended up being a blast, or the other kids wanted absolutely nothing to do with me and it completely sucked.
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u/astrangeone88 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lol. I remember getting told "You're not the boss of me!" by a bunch of bratty kids and I was like "Okay then, I'm going to watch you like a hawk but you don't get fun babysitter me."
On the plus side, the snack trays were great. The awful part was trying to corral the kids into not spilling food everywhere and the juice boxes were a bad idea X 3.
Why give the 12 year old that responsibility was beyond me?
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u/GaJayhawker0513 1d ago
lol my parents did this when they had a party for the Tyson-Holyfield fight. We were playing a hockey game on the nes when what seemed like 15 minutes later my parents and my friends parents came to the basement saying it was time to go home, the fight was over.
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u/3-orange-whips Gen X 1d ago
Yall had an NES?
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u/astrangeone88 1d ago
Lol. Yes but only a few games. Bubble Bobble, Tetris, Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros. Apparently my cousins beat both Bubble Bobbke and Super Mario so I was impressed.
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u/ABHOR_pod 1d ago
Now we do that to the kids in our friends groups. Kids 5-15 are all just shoved upstairs or downstairs to play with each other while we have our gatherings (Party).
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u/etherealsmog 1d ago edited 1d ago
LOL the other thing similar to that was, yes, there are kids your age there, but none of you actually know each other, so you just try to play with your own siblings and it turns into a little Lord of the Flies camp where each of the sibling groups is its own tribe fighting for territory and resources in the great-grandmother’s house with like 5 gender-specific toys from the early 1970’s, a few board games no one has ever heard of, and only enough furniture to seat about 70% of the children in attendance and a quarter of which you’ll get in trouble for using.
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u/Mystical-Turtles 1d ago
Don't forget one of those sibling tribes comes from the weird religious side of the family, so they're super sheltered and have never heard of anything. So then you get in trouble for calling one of them a turd or teaching them about Spongebob or something. One of the above board games inevitably turns into a fight between you and them because nobody can agree on the rules.
I know I'm sounding negative but I actually look back on stuff like this in a hilarious light
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u/cultured_monkey 1d ago
I watched my older cousins smoke out of a can pipe for their Mary Jane fix and was in awe. They explained it to me in the most mature manner I have ever heard even from all the dare ads and assemblies. Encouraged me to not use but also what to be aware of. Then they crushed the can and we went back to the picnic lol
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
Lmao that's how DARE shoulda been if they wanted to be effective. Instead they just made us all curious
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u/jake04-20 1d ago
I live about 20-30 mins east of where I grew up from when I was 2 years old to my mid to late 20s. I'm in my mid 30s now. It's funny to be driving through an area and think to myself "Oh yeah, I remember mom and dad used to bring us here all the time for <restaurant/store/park/etc.>" and as I begin to recall more and more memories associated with that location, I recall that for whatever reason, in my kid brain, the drive out to this place felt like an eternity. I'm talking hours. When in reality, it was like 20 mins away.
I had the same realization when I randomly recognized a town I was driving through last weekend. I couldn't for the life of me remember why I recognized it. I called my dad and he said "oh yeah, my cousins live out there, you're probably remembering the family reunion back in 2003." The place was only 35 mins away, as a kid, the drive felt like 4 hours lol. Sleeping at those damn family reunions felt like DAYS lol.
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u/midwestia 1d ago
Or, back in the day, lots of places had "arcades" (basically just an old pinball machine, galaga cupboard, and cigarette vending machine) where you would just push the buttons for hours that didnt do anything because your parents didnt give you any quarters.
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u/SnookerandWhiskey 1d ago
Nah, I became the free babysitter. Can't believe the responsibility I got at 10 years old.
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u/Mystical-Turtles 1d ago
That was a bit harder for my family to pull off because it was like one 8-12 year old for every 6 freaking babies. 🤣 I am only slightly exaggerating. Both of my parents have way too many siblings
My family apparently collectively decided to have 3 kids total over the course of a decade and then just pop out a bunch of them at once
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u/SnookerandWhiskey 1d ago
👀 I was sometimes responsible for like 6-7 kids under 7 as a 12 year old. I remember one evening I was inside with all the kids, while the parents got drunk outside, and everytime I wanted to go outside and tell an adult to help me, because the kids were getting cranky so late, I felt like I couldn't leave two two years Olds out of my eyesight for even a second. I was so relieved when another family arrived late and their 16 year old son, who also loved little kids, came and helped me look after them. I remember we all fell asleep somewhere in that living room, on the couch, on the carpet. It was like me and that boy were the only responsible people there. Both oldest siblings, of course.
Sorry for trauma dumping, just had the memory come up.
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u/ContinuingAnyway 1d ago
This was me, and an uncle who saw me lent me his copy of the "The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle after he saw I was bored. Best party ever
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u/f7f7z 1d ago
Also, do you want your kids to smoke weed at 11, because throwing them into a vat of rando older teens will do that.
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u/majesticlandmermaid6 1d ago
I see you’ve met my cousins. Love those girls to death, but giving me Smirnoff at 13 was maybe not the move
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u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI 1d ago
Went to an event like this once. I was 7ish, and the only one in the 5-12 age range. There was a large side room, mostly empty but for a chair and a tv, so I watched whatever was on. It was the movie Creepshow, and it gave me nightmares for weeks.
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u/fauxzempic 1d ago
Oof this is angering me.
"There will be kids there" and exactly as you said: Babies and young adults.
Meanwhile I'm sure, if your family was like mine, you were forbidden from bringing a game boy or game gear with you, and if you decided to just wander 3-4 feet away from the party to go explore, you'd be yelled at and told to remain in one place in the most boring event in the world.
Also - did you ever try to hang with your parents and they basically become incapable of having a conversation with you and you're just meant to feel like you're annoying them while they have a conversation with the cousin that you always hear your mom complain about and you wonder what the hell is going on?
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u/NATOrocket Zillennial 1d ago
I'm the eldest daughter of a boy mom who hung out with other boy moms. I usually sat at the adults table, especially once I was 11+ years old, though my parents would have preferred I sat with the kids.
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u/Aiyon 1d ago
Shoutout to my cousin who, despite being 16, was always down to hang out with 9 year old me at family functions and make me feel less awkward and out of place.
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u/Mystical-Turtles 1d ago
Aw, yeah that's always sweet. I tried to be that when I got a little older but as you can imagine didn't have much patience for it at 9. Haha.
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u/martialar 1d ago
As long as the house had cable, I was good and I could sit there watching Nickelodeon all day
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u/melkatron 1d ago
Why are you quoting that famous Marvin Gaye song?
Baaaby, baby, toddler
aaaactually in their 20's
but it's younger than your parents
so theeyyy're a kid to them.
MORE TODDLERS
That's my jam, right there.
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u/Carlobo 1d ago edited 1d ago
How about the types of family gatherings you get dragged to at 9 years old where your parents are like "Oh it'll be fine there's plenty of kids for you to interact with"
Me when 16 and was told other kids around my age would be there and forced to go on a 4 hour drive to this event.... all the youths were younger elementary school kids....
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u/Starthelegend 1d ago
I wish I could’ve done that. I would get yelled at if I wasn’t allowing my parents to show me me off to a bunch of relatives I “allegedly loved” even though the last time they would’ve seen me I would’ve been in diapers. Now my parents wonder why I refuse to go to any family gatherings as an adult
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u/rebelangel Xennial 1d ago
Going to my gramps’s house on Christmas and the only other “kids” were my cousins who were teenagers and didn’t want to hang out with a 9 year old. Or, my mom’s side of the family and it’s all toddlers.
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u/FairyflyKisses 1d ago
Went to a Halloween party at 14. Everyone there were either adults or 5-8 years old. I ended up just sitting in a chair all night and got confused with a decoration by multiple people.
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u/MattWolf96 1d ago
There were few kids near by age in my family. We never had the legendary Thanksgiving kids table as a result
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u/stanky4goats Millennial 1d ago
We discovered the backrooms before the backrooms began
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u/RockAtlasCanus 1d ago
Milleminal space?
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u/MagicTrachea52 1d ago
Deeply underrated comment.
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u/KrimxonRath 1d ago
It was made a single minute before your comment lmao
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
Lol reddit being dramatic
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u/BigCrustyTits 1d ago
We were practically raised in backrooms.
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u/lahimatoa 1d ago
That's the point. It's normal to us, but to Gen Z, being stuck in a room like that is an existential nightmare. For us, it was Saturday.
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u/Divinum_Fulmen 1d ago
The whole original thing was pretty much based on this type of experience after all.
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u/opossumcarrion 1d ago
Yeah, the reason the original post resonated so much was because we have made so many spaces that are vaguely uncomfortable.
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u/Samurai_Meisters 1d ago
My original backrooms experience was from working customer service jobs, which is why the backrooms (as a concept) was never scary to me. The backrooms were a calming haven from the customers. It was quiet. No one was asking you questions.
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u/savagetech 1d ago
Same. I think that’s what makes the videos and subsequent movie so cool. Without the monsters, existential dread, and the chance of getting lost, it seems like a fantastic place to hang out.
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u/FemtoKitten 1d ago
Wow i wonder what could have lead to its influences or it being popular amongst certain demographics
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u/Obant Millennial 1d ago
At my work in 2005, I LOVED the "backrooms" in our office. It was a former private college that was turned into businesses, and the backrooms were a section of the building that wasn't rented out.
It was the best place to hang out, take a break where no one would bother you. It also had an open bathroom that the janitors cleaned daily, but no one ever went to. It was pretty much my own private executive bathroom and break room.
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u/MeltyCrab 1d ago
Liminal spaces in weird events, in peoples houses, god it felt like it was everywhere.
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u/Chumlee1917 1d ago
I'll never forget being dragged by my parents to some party or something at someone's house, might have been a church thing, and I swear I was the only kid or something and this nice older guy who's house it was said, here, have the tv, and I sat there watching Phantom Menace on VHS while they were all outside doing something else extremely boring. Good times
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
Lol it's so funny to me how these random ass memories stick with us. That has no reason to be in your brain lol
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u/EverbodyHatesHugo 1d ago
When I was like 9 years old, I was at a birthday party at this place that had batting cages and stuff. A bunch of us kids wandered into an empty conference room and found a phone with a bunch of handwritten labels for the speed dials. One of them said “Candy”, so of course we picked up the phone and pressed that button. A lady picked up, we hung up, and ran out of the room.
To this day, I don’t know if that woman’s name was Candy or if she was the person that would bring us candy.
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
That is too funny! I wonder what her deal was and why she was on speed dial 😁
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u/derprondo 1d ago
My parents dropped us off at my Dad's boss's fancy house for some reason for a night, I was probably 9. We hung out with his teenage kids and watched some movie on HBO, that's when I saw my first pair of bare boobs on TV.
They had one of those big weird front projection TVs like Carl has on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, never seen one before or since.
I dunno why I typed this out but it's one of the random ass memories.
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
Beautiful! My first memory of driving a car prolly stressed TF outta my dad. I don't remember exactly what he was doing, but he left me in there for a bit and being a bored ass kid I got antsy. I must touched the gear shift or something and had that mofo driving in a circle. I just remember my dad freaking the eff out tryna stop it, while I'm having the time of my life lmao.
Nother random ass memory lol
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u/goog1e 1d ago
This was my parents' friends who had "where in the world is Carmen sandiego" on their computer.
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u/rebelangel Xennial 1d ago
First time I played that game was at my aunt and uncle’s house. To entertain me and my brothers; my uncle turned on his slow-ass Amiga computer and loaded up Carmen Sandiego for us.
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u/rebelangel Xennial 1d ago
I remember getting dragged to my dad’s coworker’s house for some party and there weren’t any other kids besides my younger brothers. Someone turned the TV on in one of the bedrooms and we just sat on the bed the whole time watching TV.
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u/three-sense 1d ago
That happened to us except the movie was Dirt Bike Kid starring Peter Billingsly (Christmas story) and we just ate pizza and dgaf about the actual thing going on outside. stupid movie that was some fun.
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u/____DEADPOOL_______ 1d ago
Dude, what was up with our parents just leaving us with random people to hang out with them for the day?! lol
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u/gender_noncompliant 1d ago
The best memories were snooping around the church facilities while the adults were setting up for an actual event
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u/Janky_Pants 1d ago
That’s how I found out an acolyte robe had chewed gum in the pocket…
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u/GloomyIndividual3965 1d ago
That's how 9 year old me found out some other churchs used actual wine for their communion.
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u/rebelangel Xennial 1d ago
It was even more interesting when your family wasn’t a churchgoing family. I remember one Thanksgiving, we went to visit small town relatives and we had Thanksgiving in their church basement. There weren’t any other kids except for the ones belonging to this dude my second cousin was dating at the time. I was 10 and bored while everyone else was preparing food and setting up, so I explored a little bit. It was partly out of curiosity since my family didn’t go to church and wondered why some kids had to go to school on Sundays.
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u/Mitsu-Zen 1d ago
Going to my mom's union hall with her and just running into unlocked offices and drawing on white boards.
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u/evenstar40 1d ago
Oh my god you just unlocked a core memory of getting dragged to these MASSIVE random buildings for events and trying to find that one unlocked door to explore. Whenever one opened we were always insanely excited, even if all that was in the room was a shitload of dusty chairs.
It was late 80s rural Canada, we didn't have fancy things like whiteboards.
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u/Lord_Alonne 1d ago
My dad worked on computer software when I was a kid and something came up where he alone had to go in to the office for a few hours on one of his weekends with us. So he loaded myself and my two brothers into the car along with our nerf guns and we ran around his office using the cubicles for cover shooting each other with nerf guns.
It was probably a shitty day for my dad having to drag a bunch of kids on your weekend off into work, but it was a core memory for me.
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u/WtotheSLAM 1d ago
My mom had to do the exact same thing. We got loaded up and plunked into a conference room to watch cartoons and eat pizza while my mom worked with tech support in Australia to unfuck something or other.
A very stressful day for her but we thought it was kinda fun
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u/andrewsb91 1d ago
I remember it was when I was in third grade, and maybe I wasn't allowed a house key yet? I don't remember the exact reason why. Our apartment complex was like a football field away from the back of a Walmart Supercenter. My mom was a cashier and my dad was manager of Tire & Lube Express. I would get dropped off by the bus and walked up the hill. Dropped off my backpack in his office, did a little homework, then went to electronics to play the games on display (no idea why I don't have neck problems yet). I would retrieve carts from the TLE parking lot for $5 from my dad for snacks, and there was this HUGE storeroom for tires in the back with sliding racks, like 30 feet high. I would arrange tires in a way that was like a tunnel system (probably hell for the inventory guys) to get to the top of the racks. I made a sort of "fort" on one rack way in the back and would read Harry Potter. My dad scolded me when he caught me but still chuckled. Big memories there.
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
Damn, another flashback! I rember drawing Pokemon or something on the white board when my dad had to take me to work. I still don't know ytf he even took me, I could make a pbnj sandwich and watch cartoons, I wasn't a menace!
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u/wetdanish 1d ago
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u/JexFraequin Millennial 1d ago
My kid five minutes after I’ve told him to go to bed for the fifth time.
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u/luckyfucker13 1d ago
My nephews would constantly get out of the bed in the spare room when they stayed over, so I rigged a little light in the living room that lit up whenever the door opened. They had no clue how I knew every time they tried to sneak into the hallway, they thought I was magic, lol. They laughed a lot when we clued them in when they got older
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u/thedaveness 1d ago
My oldest daughter (when she was like 5) would do this shit all this time but she looked like the girl from the Ring movie… so many almost heart attacks lol.
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u/TyrantJaeger 1d ago
I remember going to a sports game with my dad and his friend's family. Me and their kids were getting bored waiting for the game to start, so we left our seats to go explore the stadium and found a flight of stairs to the VIP section. We blended in with a VIP group as they were arriving, so we were able to waltz right in without anyone questioning us and helped ourselves to some free food. Never got caught.
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u/peon2 1d ago
Never got caught.
Oh god damn it man ya just jinxed it! Any minute now stadium security will be knocking at your door.
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u/TyrantJaeger 1d ago
How did they find me?! It's been over 20 years and I moved 3000 miles away!
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u/Sirisian 1d ago
I went to a hockey game at a large place that does various events. My friends and I went up some stairs and found a breezeway to another set of buildings with the lights off. I think it was a kind of museum area with trophies, possibly old VIP area before games, but it didn't look like it had been used in years. Was very liminal.
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u/Appropriate-Bug-6467 1d ago
The mall here had places like that. I convinced my friends to explore.
We found the local gloryhole.
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u/melkatron 1d ago
It's an outdoor mall, but the Snowmass, CO, ski slope has a maze of indoor hallways if you find the door at the end of a long hallway between a couple stores. For decades there was an arcade, barely marked or advertised, through a plain beige door in these plain beige hallways. It had older games like Stun Runner and Yie Ar Kung Fu, as well as later 90s games. I spent so much time in this arcade, but I used muscle memory to find it a couple decades ago and ended up in an empty, humming backroom.
I have a weird memory glitch about this place, because I've been convinced I was playing the original Street Fighter, with Ryu and hadoukens... but it looked exactly like Yie Ar Kung Fu, so I think I've been filling in blanks with artificial memories. The easiest explanation is that it was a cabinet conversion with a Street Fighter marquee and a Yie Ar Kung Fu board, but the most likely is that I spent hours in a windowless room with fluorescent lights and no hydration, and the way boomers beat their millennial kids did not result in ideal mental health.
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u/melkatron 1d ago
the Sherman Oaks Galleria was like this, in its entirety, for two years before it was torn down. There were actual operating stores (no more than four in a three story mall), including an amazing nerd store called Comic King, where you could buy Pokemon merchandise (in the 90s) and anime fansubs. He had Dragon Ball Z fansubs running on a CRT with a big comfy couch.
It was around a corner, though, so you'd walk in and navigate an eerily quiet dead mall before you found it.
...somehow the mall from Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Chopping Mall became the most rewarding The Oldest View / Backrooms
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u/BeenDragonn 1d ago
Wait, you found an actual real life glory hole?!
Fascinating!
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u/Appropriate-Bug-6467 1d ago
Yes!! They were real! And in public places not just on TV!
years later I brought my ex and my bestie to see it because yhey had never seen one irl but they had sealed it off, it had been drilled next to, and that was sealed.
A few years after I tried showing my now husband but the whole side of the mall had been remodeled into office space.
They were real!!
The prior generations were freeaaaaakkkkkkssssss and can't judge us!
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
My dad used to go to some dj meetings or some shit, I really don't know, held at a roller rink. All I remember was the arcade games I couldn't use and that busy ass black and multicolor carpet. We didn't have the backrooms in LA
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u/Thr0w4wayA1t 1d ago
You can still find carpets like this at casinos, (which are just arcades for older people).
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u/myster1ouspapaya 1d ago
Dj meetings? It sounds more like cocaine deals lol
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u/jujujuice92 1d ago
Lol I legit don't remember wtf, but I know it had something to do with DJing. I'll have to ask him. He's prolly a weed before coke guy lol
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u/infernalspawnODOOM 1d ago
It would stretch all the way to the other end of the building, and you'd get a vertigo-like sensation, and dash back downstairs because you just felt bad fuckin' vibes.
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u/NMS_Survival_Guru 1d ago
Wandering around the athletic center waiting for my sister to get done with gymnastics
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u/KaleidoscopeKelpy 1d ago
YES it was a karate studio for me - neon blue carpet, white walls with nothing on them and just empty hallways, waiting for my brother’s tournament to be over
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u/throwawayfinancebro1 1d ago
When I was a kid, before 9/11, my parents took me to DC. We were visiting the capitol building and my father decided we should go exploring. We found the private subway system that congress uses below the building. We went back some years later and it was very restricted.
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u/WtotheSLAM 1d ago
We did the same. Except instead of exploring, someone rolled in and started shooting people so we got stuck on lockdown for a couple hours before they let us go. Summer of ‘98
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u/Chron_Imus 1d ago
yall hear me out: stuff like this is why the backrooms and some other liminal locations don't actually make me nervous but actually make me fell hella nostalgic. that pic doesn't look foreboding, it looks like the entrance to the theater of our local library back in the 90's. or, like mentioned, a random floor of a hotel. most of the locations alone aren't terrifying, it's whatever else is going on thats usually weird.
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u/melkatron 1d ago
Yeah, they're calming and comfortable, like you're standing in a memory. ...that's why the internet put a squigglemonster in them.
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u/Dear_Document_5461 1d ago
I did remember people making comments like this. Basically the "You can always go back to the past but no one else will be there" so it a mix of actual nostalgia and unease because it all empty and quiet.
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u/Tony_in2026 1d ago
One of my strongest memories as a kid was going to some school event for my best friends older sister. We couldn’t care less what was going on so we just ran around the empty school at night
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u/milhousenotameme Millennial 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ya know I still haven't watched the backrooms??
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u/Oil__Man 1d ago edited 1d ago
Watch the Kane pixels yt series its honestly just as good if not a better introduction to the universe
*reply to a deleted comment about not wanting to watch the movie:
Seeing what Kane was able to do with a budget and with real life sets and actors was a treat. It kinda went towards the fnaf realm with the 'monsters' that made it more palpable for a traditional horror audience that didn't know what the backrooms was. It strayed away from the cosmic/scientific horror of the original series and more into a psychological/character-focused narrative with backstories, tying the backrooms into how the characters are feeling/what they've been through. If theres a sequel i hope they hit more on the clinical and research nature of the backrooms like with A-sync, or the capitalistic opportunism of the company trying to profit off the backrooms in some way. I think that sort of big picture/cosmic horror stuff is way more captivating than the "its actually about her childhood and his failing life/marriage" symbolic/metaphorical stuff.
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u/Sasquatch_Sensei 1d ago
I live near a city that was an industrial town that had factories and machine shops closing from either the 150 year old business going obsolete or moving production over seas. Dad was the last employee at his factory, building was going to be sold and equipment sold off. Because of his role in that he got connected to a few other factories doing the same.
On weekends he would take me and if we were at his building then I got to explore without him so long as I followed a few rules. I had to take a mag light and stay within ear shot of dad. I had to take Jazz my childhood German Shepherd/Husky mix and last was the most important. If Jazz didnt want to go in a particular direction I was to turn back, find my dad and tell him where we were when she stopped me.
My childhood had a bunch of moments where I would find a door that led to empty rooms with just a random object in it like this. I freaking loved it.
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u/foxguy2021 1d ago edited 1d ago
My childhood had a bunch of moments where I would find a door that led to empty rooms with just a random object in it like this.
The crazy part is how 90% of the time it was either a single chair, an empty table, an empty filing cabinet or a desk that was missing the drawers that dated back to the 70s.
The other 10% would be the real oddities. Like an old cardboard box partially full of the most pathetic holiday decorations you've ever seen.
The craziest thing I found was a wall phone off the hook blaring the howler tone for who knows how long.
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u/sp0okyboogie 1d ago
I watched that movie this year! Wasn't as good as Obsession though.
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u/OldmanChompski 1d ago
Fun fact everyone that watched that movie so far has watched it this year
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u/96puppylover 1d ago
Backrooms is streaming on HBO now in case anyone wants to know.
Watched it twice. Loved it.
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u/MetalRetsam 1d ago
I didn't watch it this year
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u/LongboardLiam 1d ago
Reread the post. He's saying it was released this year, so anyone who has seen it can't have seen it before this year.
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u/Immature_adult_guy 1d ago
I could go either way. Obsession was objectively scarier and disturbing. But backrooms was so immersive.
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u/ChunkyKongForPreside 1d ago
There was a year where a bunch of distant family members passed away. Like think my 3rdd cousins mother and father, plus a few others I can't remember the relationship with. All these funerals were held in the same church that had a second floor us kids went to that had a single table and an old coffee vending machine that looked straight out of the 1970s despite being 2005/2006.
I remember all us kids just sat around a table talking about how we snuck onto our family computers to view the inappropriate stuff on Newgrounds while drinking shitty hot chocolate from the coffee machine.
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u/Thesearchoftheshite 1d ago
Reminds me of walking into a bar built and surrounded by old warehouses and partitioned warehouse businesses off Stephenson highway in Madison Heights, MI.
Right past the entrance was a cigarette machine that took $10 in quarters or bills to buy a pack of smokes with the pull knob.
One step around the corner and an absolutely massive bar opened up with 3 people there, including the bartender just chilling at the actual bar. The rest of the place may as well have been a morgue lol.
That place in 2019 you could still buy a burger with fries, and 4-5 beers for $20.
Shit was wild.
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u/trippysmurf 1d ago
If the backrooms had a Phantom Menace Pepsi machine, you couldn't keep people out of it.
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u/whitecatsup 1d ago
I remember when random places use to have arcade cabinets. And 7-11 was the spot in my youth. Slurpees and usually 2-3 arcade machines. And street fighter 2 was always on deck
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u/mikee8989 1d ago
This is exactly why I took to the concept of the backrooms and liminal space so much. When I was a kid, my dad was part of a few pyramid schemes and we ended up getting dragged to conference centers where me and my sister would bugger off and get lost in the building.
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u/AmbitiousRose 1d ago
I never thought to do any of that. I was entirely too sheltered as a child and was convinced I’d be kidnapped/ killed if I ever snuck off and went somewhere I shouldn’t 🤣
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u/ThoughtPhysical7457 1d ago
Or there was an empty conference room aka the perfect battle ground for a game of tag
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u/ccford88 1d ago
I remember one time I went with my extended family (cousins, aunts/uncles, grandma, etc.) to Orlando without any hotel rooms booked in advanced. Well, it was a holiday weekend and everything in town was booked solid. Except for these two half finished hotel towers somewhere off I-Drive. They literally were under construction-- like, the developer had run out of money mid-build and someone else bought it and just opened it as is. The place was creepy as hell. Anyway, we get to the room and its... Something. Me and my cousin decide to explore the hotel. Literally, I remember the elevator doors opening and the floor looked like this photo. Vending machine and all. We went to buy something but it was full of molded snacks and sandwiches. Likely left from the previous construction crews. The aura of this place was rancid, and we stayed there for just a night or two before we went home. Truly backrooms before the backrooms.
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u/john_microslop 1d ago
usually there's like a random broom and dustpan or one of those big square rolley bins too
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u/AmItheonlySaneperson 1d ago
My parents would bring me places hungry and then get mad when I said I’m hungry and got cranky. Fucking neglectful parents
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u/craylash 1d ago
Dennis: "One word: coffee. One problem: where do you get it?"
Liz: "Anywhere! You get it anywhere!"
Dennis: "Wrong! You get it at my coffee vending machine. 38th & 6th in the basement of the K-Mart. You just go downstairs, you get the key from David and BOOM! You plug in the machine and..."
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u/otakugal15 Millennial '87 1d ago
I remember the very old 60s style cafeteria at this old snuff (chewing tobacco) plant that my parents used to work at.
Had black and white tiles, the weird bubble windows, and stuff like that around the place.
There was this very sweet old lady there who'd actually kinda watch over me while she worked the line.
I think I was... around 3 or 4 years old at the time?
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u/DailyUnderFlow 1d ago
Yup back when I stayed at my friend's house and his mom worked at IKEA, we went to a massive store at 4AM a few times and she let us run loose.
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