some thoughts on the backrooms

So the thing with the backrooms as as a cultural object is that I think it's riven in twain by a weirdly undiscussed generational divide. Given its existence as an internet-born, memetic fiction project à la the SCP Foundation, it is sort of a cooperative project across the Millennial and zoomers. I think this is crucial, because (as i alluded to in my review of the 2026 movie), I think the horror symbols used in 'the backrooms' are being treated differently by these two generations. For millennials, generally speaking, we are aware of the spaces that 'the backrooms' are based on — likely we were conscious people for at least some amount of time before the malls became abandoned. I, personally, went to at least three malls as a kid regularly that nowadays would be described as 'abandoned'. For the slightly younger generation, the zoomers, they likely did not know these places as anything other than abandoned. For them, these empty malls or office parks or whatever have always been…