r/interestingasfuck • u/Dismal-Display-370 • 18h ago

Everyone is too happy around this guy

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u/mastershake04 18h ago

Why does every building in NK seem to be designed as a liminal space? Something about the colors and lighting, and lack of windows maybe? Even with a room full of people it gives me that weird feeling.

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u/Dr_McPogi 17h ago

Look here, guy.... I don't know what liminal means.

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u/Bridgebrain 16h ago

Imagine, if you will, walking into the back hallway that connects stores in the mall and the trash bins out back. The area is purpose built, utilitarian. The walls are sloshed with different ages of stains, there's a little bit of random litter, not anything big enough to be worth bending down and picking up yourself. The lights are bright and buzz annoyingly, because they're cheap and durable and the customers will never see them. There are doorways everywhere but they're all locked. 

Anything happens.  One of the lights flicker. Someone opens one of the locked doors (to also go throw their trash). A breeze comes in from the trash area and makes the paper scatter. You are immediately out of a utilitarian space, and for a moment, in a horror movie, about to be horribly murder by a ghost or a slasher. and then the moment passes and you go to throw away the trash. 

And that moment happens every time you go there, building more and more dread, even though it's completely benign and nothing really has ever happened there. 

And then the Internet picks it up and makes a whole genre playing off that dread, because other people have been walking through the empty office after hours, and others have been at amusement parks alone doing the dry run, or walked around their empty house after moving out, and felt the same strange dread build for no particular reason. 

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u/BeautifulBlueNight 10h ago

That is a very, very on point description!

Especially the part about an amusement park speaks to me. 😅 I worked 4 years at a theme park, there is something particular about walking through it when it's closed. Be it the morning before opening or in closing days for maintenance, it's a special feeling.

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u/Dripdry42 9h ago

I find them comforting… i guess i lean more toward the Camp Miasma than Backrooms crowd… i find liminal spaces uniquely soothing, with some occasional creepiness. I ADORE showing up to big events when im the first one there

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u/Valcyor 4h ago

I waited overnight in an abandoned terminal in an international airport due to the scheduling of my layover, and let me tell you, it was the most surreal thing ever. I thought it'd be a Backrooms experience, but no, I loved it.

Just clicking away on my laptop, looking up and seeing PDX's massive Terminal C stretching out for a half a mile before me, enormous vaulted roofs, departure signs, peoplemovers droning on... and for six hours it was all designed just for me.

10/10 would layover again.

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u/hobbycollector 2h ago

I hear North Korea welcomes western defectors and treats them better than their own citizens.

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u/cbessette 8h ago

Similar, I worked in a factory with 100 other people, but I worked a late shift for a while that would leave me in this huge building all by myself after dark. It was so weird walking around in this dark quiet place that was normally bright and full of people, noises.
It was like the mix of loneliness, boredom, slight anxiety.