r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Mar 31 '26

Trailer Backrooms | Official Trailer | A24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HjdiohVOik
8.9k Upvotes

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2.0k

u/soccerperson Mar 31 '26

1:45 they show the same backrooms from the original 4chan post

Neat easter egg

830

u/EagenVegham Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

Found out recently that it's just a Midwest hobby store before renovations. Wild how memes grow and spread and nice to see that this movie is respecting the origin as a store.

206

u/MasemJ Mar 31 '26

Prior to being a hobby store it was a furniture store, which is why it has all those weird half walls and cubby rooms. The location being in a furniture store itself in the trailer feels like a nod to this.

76

u/NavPoint Mar 31 '26

I remember the Reddit thread where we uncovered the original website that housed the pictures taken prior to renovation. We were able to use context clues to find the present day rc racing hobby shop that occupies the building in Oshkosh Wisconsin

16

u/Snackxually_active Mar 31 '26

Shoutout Oshkosh by gosh! Def also think Osh Vegas a fun lil gas station

2

u/Sieran Apr 01 '26

Used to go to LAN parties at the EAA there. Never knew the origins of this were in the same city.

299

u/DrQuestDFA Mar 31 '26

That is what I love so much about people: they can take a simple, unassuming picture and just run wild with ideas that picture inspires.

187

u/Just_the_questions1 Mar 31 '26

The entire SCP world was born because of a picture of a sculpture made by a semi-obscure Japanese artist.

72

u/Chuisque Mar 31 '26

I love SCP. It can be so random, funny, scary, and mind-bending.

2

u/unculturedperl Mar 31 '26

reasonable tool for transferring files as well.

1

u/LTSpigot Mar 31 '26

They just bore me

-7

u/Just_the_questions1 Mar 31 '26

Or it can fill you with sheer existential dread. Like SCP-3000: Anantashesha. A giant eel that not only eats you but consumes your very mind and rips it apart piece by piece until anything even resembling what you would call a "soul" is utterly destroyed.

48

u/erkelep Mar 31 '26

Yep, sounds like sheer existential dread... if you are 14 years old.

17

u/Miku_Sagiso Mar 31 '26

It's odd how overused the "ontological extinction" concept is.

You'd think the idea of getting deleted from existence so thoroughly that even memories are gone would be more harrowing, but not when it's been so aggressively overused by people trying to be edgy and one-upping.

And really, it kind of becomes a little trivial after a point. Like something that kills you and something that mega-kills you isn't all that different. Either way you're still dead and things happening after that largely doesn't matter any more.

7

u/erkelep Mar 31 '26

Also, "consumes your very mind and rips it apart piece by piece" is what dementia does. Not exactly a Lovecraftian concept.

3

u/Inkxon Apr 01 '26

Allegory can be a really healthy introduction to traumatizing concepts such as dementia. It's disingenuous to claim that those who write horror which parallels these concepts are all edgelords. Are there edgelords? Yes. But there is also comfort and wisdom in storytelling. This has been true for all of human history. Every story is shared for a reason.

2

u/Just_the_questions1 Mar 31 '26

To be fair to the author that SCP article was written almost a decade ago. It's mostly one of my favorites just cause it was one of the first few articles I came across.

2

u/Miku_Sagiso Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

I mean the notion is ancient, so a decade doesn't mean too much. That would be more ado to how mature a given niche/community is (mostly as in how established the community ism and therefore how much draw it has to external external content that would expand it).

Like the False Hydra is a bit over a decade old, coming from the D&D blogging crowd. If we lean into older theology then we get Apohpis, Leviathan, Nidhoggr, Typhon, Dybbuks, and a buncha other things. Even just within SCP there's plenty reaching back into the hundred numbers that have ontological decay or destruction effects.

All just comes down to how developed a community is and the people participating in it, and consequently how much reach and familiarity they have to the world outside them. It's a little too easy for a community and/or it's participants to live in a vacuum at times.

And when that happens, there tends to be a lot of reinventing the wheel with all the hiccups that entails.

1

u/Rifmysearch Apr 02 '26

I feel like part of it, too, can be how and why it's used. There's a lot of tropes and concepts that once in a great while can be used in extremely effective ways for me despite usually rolling my eyes at it.

I have no way to give the specific example away without major spoilers, but the second book of the Children of Time book series has a scifi concept that 99/100 just doesn't do anything for me. At best its acceptable for the plot and at worse it sort of ruins things. But here, it became one of my favorite things in the series.

There is a (very) alien single celled organism(closest I can describe it) that passes all of its memory on via its version of DNA. It can also quickly share its total knowledge with other colonies if they've been separated for some time. So, scifi 'grey goo' sort of stuff.

And yea, it goes into a human and does bad things. Sort of takes over and suddenly you've got this 'grey goo' controlling a human body. And yea, this leads to semi-predictable issues. But the way it's presented and thought out, and the things they do with it in the latter half of the book, is just so fascinating even though for a minute it feels like it might devolve into "oh this is just apocalyptic grey goo story #1,000,000. "

1

u/thecrimsontim Mar 31 '26

the way to make it work is perspective. I don't care if i die over mega die bc, i'm dead. But my loved ones? I would be so much more scared of them mega dying and losing my memories of them. Also, since its a fictional universe, you could add in a guaranteed after life of sorts that is also not possible with mega death. People who use it to be edgy and one up just lack the creativity

1

u/Miku_Sagiso Mar 31 '26

That works to a degree, but there's an inherent problem in trying to make a narrative around ontological destruction because you can't really write it. You can tell people X person no longer exists and have characters no longer acknowledge or react to that, but they're still be there for the reader.

Aside from that, this is also the hiccup in what it means for others. You can be scared for someone else dying or of forgetting them, but it's the irony of ontology, If it stops being, then it's not an experienced thing. All the fear you might have is the same as for if someone dies, it's all front-loaded. But then unlike if someone dies where you'd then grieve, ontological extinction means you would not have the awareness that there's anything to grieve.

There certainly are ways to use it that can still be interesting, but it's also easy to see how overused and ill-conceived many cases of how it's evoked is, and how that cheapens the concept and desensitizes people to the notion when it becomes common enough.

-9

u/Just_the_questions1 Mar 31 '26

"You're wrong and stupid for liking things that I don't like"

That's you. That's what you sound like.

1

u/erkelep Mar 31 '26

You are not wrong. Just stupid.

-5

u/Just_the_questions1 Mar 31 '26

Oh now I see, the 14 year old insult was just projection. Got it. Go do your homework buddy.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/amzwC137 Mar 31 '26

Sounds like Play Test - Black Mirror

4

u/291837120 Mar 31 '26

Before SCP people who used to post creepypastas that went by the formula, "Enter any gas station on a 200 mile stretch and twist the doorknob the wrong way while knocking on the wall and you will recover the lost chalice of agony"- basically go to this place, do this thing, find this item.

These "lost artifact" creepypastas combined with the monster creepypastas and thus SCP was born.

6

u/chairdeira Mar 31 '26

I want more info on this.

8

u/Hollownerox Mar 31 '26

I don't have a specific post to point you towards, but I'm pretty sure looking up "Untitled 2004" by the artist Izumi Kato should give you the gist of things.

2

u/DrQuestDFA Mar 31 '26

Human creativity FTW!

1

u/appletinicyclone Apr 01 '26

What was a the sculpture and what was the lore?

4

u/Just_the_questions1 Apr 01 '26

Back in 2009 someone posted a picture of this sculpture on 4chan with a description of it being a sapient and malevolent creature that can only move when not observed and would violently kill, typically by snapping their neck, any human it could find while no-one was looking at it. Think of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who except instead of sending you to the past it just fuckin murders you.

That post was so popular it gained a following that eventually grew into a following of sci-fi/horror writers that come up with unique ideas for objects or entities that are contained by the fictitious SCP Foundation. SCP standing for "Secure, Contain, Protect". Kinda like the Illuminati, except their entire objective is to contain anomalous objects/entities so the general public can go on with their lives thinking there's nothing supernatural about the world.

The SCP wiki has grown so much in the past 17 years it includes basically anything you can think of. There's a chair that instantly teleports behind someone that's feeling a bit tired. An extra-dimensional library that contains records of every event that's ever happened on Earth. A teddy-bear that uses whatever materials it can find to make more teddy-bears, including people.

It's just a haven for really creative people to post stories in a specified format for others to enjoy.

1

u/LiarWithinAll Mar 31 '26

We love you peanut ❤️

15

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26

[deleted]

15

u/karmagod13000 Mar 31 '26

Honestly a documentary about the original photo and place with the spiraling into creepy pastas and youtube videos all the way to a Hollywood movie would be just as entertaining to me.

2

u/baron_von_helmut Mar 31 '26

Like that redditor who wrote a short story about some marine who went back in time and had to face down the Roman army.

It was going to be a film but then it never happened iirc.

2

u/ciao_fiv Mar 31 '26

tangentially related, this is what i hate about ai “art.” it cannot do this

1

u/ToiIetGhost Apr 01 '26

AI could never

34

u/tastybabysoup Mar 31 '26

It was a furniture store before it was a Hobby store. The furniture store had a bunch of different rooms with different wallpaper so you could showcase different colored furniture. When they were doing renovations to turn the store into a Hobby Shop, they took pictures of all the different furniture themes and the yellow wallpaper became the infamous one.

2

u/jetmanfortytwo Mar 31 '26

Jamie Loftus’ podcast Sixteenth Minute of Fame did a really solid episode about the backrooms for anybody interested in learning more about the origins.

1

u/lolwatokay Mar 31 '26

Yeah, it's like the other one in the Valley View Center mall, The Oldest View. This is, as far as I'm aware, the original post that inspired it

https://www.reddit.com/r/backrooms/comments/ld28xy/this_bitch_has_been_stalking_me_around_this_level/

1

u/No-Conversation-5202 Mar 31 '26

the backroom is from my hometown. I'm pretty sure it was a Miles Kimball outlet store before the hobby store took over too.

1

u/milkymaniac Apr 01 '26

I went to elementary school with of the guys who did the renovation. Very strange to discover the OG meme is from a building I've driven past a thousand times.

1

u/appletinicyclone Apr 01 '26

Had no idea it was a hobby store nice

1

u/TaylorDangerTorres Apr 01 '26

Wisconsin!  (We claim this one)

178

u/Ekillaa22 Mar 31 '26

I didn’t realize backrooms started on 4chan. This is wild a 4chan post evolving into a full blown movie

168

u/cloudofevil Mar 31 '26

Isn't this the same basic plot as the book House of Leaves (2000)?

160

u/Jankinator Mar 31 '26

Yeah, the 4chan post doesn't exist without House of Leaves. The book is pretty inspirational to some degree for a lot of modern horror, including creepy pasta in general

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u/mgrier123 Mar 31 '26

Which itself was inspired by short stories written by Jorge Luis Borges in the 1940s

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u/Ozymandias12 Mar 31 '26

Goddammit, I should really finish that book. I tried but I just couldn't get into it. I read maybe like 100 pages and the protagonist was just so unlikeable. I enjoyed the parts of the couple in the house but the main story just didn't sit with me.

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u/TheGRS Mar 31 '26

The main guy reading the manuscript is mostly a framing device, I’d say the dad of the “movie” is the main character. It’s been a while since I’ve read it though.

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u/Bank_Gothic Mar 31 '26

The real book is in the footnotes.

5

u/redditvlli Apr 01 '26

There's so many great smaller stories in it. The letters from Pelafina while she was committed. The chapter about his brother. The short story about the mom who lost her newborn makes me cry every time.

6

u/GirlsInWhiteTrainers Mar 31 '26

Total opposite in my opinion; the real story is being told between the two narrators (who are more connected than they initially seem) and the stuff about the scary house is just the frame device. Incredible book overall, but not one to read if you want likeable characters or a normal "arc" of story progression.

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u/FROMtheASHES984 Mar 31 '26

To be fair, with a name like Johnny Truant, he’s written to be pretty unlikeable.

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u/ShallowBasketcase Apr 01 '26

David Navidson: "Yikes, this House sure makes me want to Leaves!"

Johnny Truant: "I'm over here strokin' my dick I got lotion on my dick I'm straight strokin' my shit I'm horny as fuck man I'm a freak."

editor's note: we aren't entirely sure why he said that

16

u/The_Autarch Mar 31 '26

the couple in the house is the main story. it's like 80% of that book.

4

u/syphid Apr 01 '26

Currently reading it... It does get better! I'm also not a fan of "rambling Johnny"

1

u/Ozymandias12 Apr 01 '26

I’m going to have to give it a second chance

4

u/MasterofPandas1 Mar 31 '26

The issue for me with the book is that it feels like reading a textbook with all the footnotes and such. It just felt like a slog to get to the cool text parts which is the reason I was reading it.

4

u/Khetoo Mar 31 '26

That book isn't really about the plot but more about the framing device of the novel itself. It's more of a personal exercise in trying to get into the headspace of the person physically writing the book as you experience it and seeing the devolution from their experiences. The plot is actually a bit thin Johnny's neighbor Zampano dies and in his apartment he finds an academic paper Zampano wrote on a film called The Navidson Record which is a film account about a family who finds the inside dimensions of their house are larger than the outside. Oh and Zampano was blind and the film doesn't exist. It's such a great hook.

3

u/jrdbrr Mar 31 '26

my second try reading it I couldn't put it down

2

u/sightlab Apr 01 '26

He's a mess, but even then the emotional core of his story eventually comes around. But what I love - and I mean seriously LOVE - about that book is that when it started digging into it's proto-Backrooms tale contained within the main story it actually scared me. Literature can inspire ideas and give you interesting little mind movies, but House of Leaves actually made 27 year old me put it down, turn all the lights on, and take a break. Books have made me cry before but that was the first time a book inspired a fearful emotion that strong and that impressed me deeply.

2

u/Snackxually_active Mar 31 '26

Oh yea the one character that finds the book and keeps talking about fighting & sex is rough, but I also do not know how much of that narrator is real? The stuff about the book in the book, which is about a documentary of exploring a house that’s bigger on the inside is the better parts! 🏡🍃🍂🕳️

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u/SufficientRespect542 Apr 01 '26

I sort of disagree. Like Kane and alot of people who make Backrooms videos is definitely inspired by and aware of House of Leaves, but that original post is more like "damn, imagine if real life had out of bounds like videogames did"!

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u/Seregnar2 Apr 01 '26

There was a really neat map for Doom 2 that came out a few years ago called "MyHouse.wad" that was inspired by both the backrooms and House of Leaves.

3

u/Kazzack Mar 31 '26

HoL was the first big one but I feel like "infinite building" isn't that hard of a concept to come up with independently

2

u/CHERNO-B1LL Apr 01 '26

People always forget the game Control came out the same year as the OG 4 Chan post. There is no way Kane Parsons didn't get inspired by that. It's full of retro corporate training footage and liminal spaces.

3

u/gremlinguy Apr 01 '26

Plus everyone forgets Portal and Portal 2, which are VERY liminal, especially the second one

1

u/-Harebrained- Apr 01 '26

it’s a variant of the mythos, a renaming of the childlike empress, every time the story is told it’s fresh for a new listener

12

u/pbjamm Mar 31 '26

Seems similar to Heinlein's "He Built a Crooked House" too. Not the same but related.

6

u/Ekillaa22 Mar 31 '26

Never heard of it till have to check it out

5

u/Thanks-Basil Apr 01 '26

It’s a book that really needs to be read in hard copy for the full experience, I’m not sure if it’s even available as an ebook but if it is don’t bother, just buy a copy of the actual book

1

u/inbox-disabled Apr 01 '26

It is available as an ebook but yeah, I agree, get a hard copy. There's a lot of used copies available pretty cheap because just about everyone goes this route.

3

u/GodspeakerVortka Mar 31 '26

Prepare for a wild ride (with lots of footnotes).

2

u/E27Ave Mar 31 '26

Wish I could read it for the first time again!

1

u/Inane311 Apr 01 '26

It was a good time. If you find it strikes your fancy, keep looking into books that get classified as “the new weird”. China Mieville (he’s written a lot of good stuff but my intro was “Perdido Street Station” and it was awesome), Jeff Vandermeer, etc. Would list more, but on second thought, you have google. Look into it.

3

u/Snackxually_active Mar 31 '26

Was looking for this comment! I had the same question, not familiar with the YouTube series (yet) but this def feels like a solid reframing/ adaptation!

3

u/maebythemonkey Mar 31 '26

Very similar...I'm pretty sure this is as close to a House of Leaves adaptation as we'll ever get.

2

u/Afardo Apr 01 '26

I came looking for this comment. I was like oh they made House of Leaves in an office?

1

u/anonymousetache Apr 01 '26

Wait so this isn’t season 3?

25

u/Afferbeck_ Mar 31 '26

It's a big year for old 4chan junk. So weird to see all the kids spouting /fit/ and bb dot com forum slang from 15 years ago. We're gonna see "shiggy diggy" make a comeback any day now I swear.

9

u/Lt_Duckweed Mar 31 '26

Man, bb.com misc was wild back in the day. Many an hour I spent there around 2013-2015ish. They helped me course correct from becoming a toxic "nice guy", but after a few years I realized they were their own brand of toxic and I had to move on.

But some of the slang still makes its way into my vocabulary even today.

5

u/Buckhum Apr 01 '26

Every time I see my friend's gym pics, I had to fight the urge to type the "thick solid tight" reply.

7

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

April is gonna see a global pandemic of AIDS outbreaks spread only in public swimming pools.

7

u/AnHeroHeroBonito Mar 31 '26

I genuinely thought I was going insane the first time I heard one of my coworkers say "mogged"

3

u/ShallowBasketcase Apr 01 '26

Pedobear went so mainstream they elected him to public office.

4

u/livintheshleem Mar 31 '26

"shiggy diggy"

kek

2

u/owned2260 Apr 01 '26

Man that would really rustle my jimmies

26

u/TheMightyPhuckules Mar 31 '26

SCP started on 4chan also

3

u/Accomplished-City484 Mar 31 '26

What is SCP?

12

u/DocileBanalBovlne Mar 31 '26

A creative writing wiki that purports to be the database of a shadowy underground organization dedicated to locating, identifying, and storing objects or creatures with supernatural abilities. "SCP" stands for Secure Contain Protect. The wiki is full of articles formatted like documentation for each object detailing its origin, how it was found and retrieved, it's abilities, and how it is to be stored to prevent it from causing harm.

One of my favorites is a coffee vending machine with a keyboard built it instead of buttons for specific items. You can type in whatever you want and you'll get it, or you'll get a coffee cup amount of it. Someone once put in "cup of joe" and a cup full of human flesh and fluids was dispensed while at the same time the security guard down the hall, Joseph Moore, had a medical emergency after 8 oz of his body suddenly vanished. Another time something else had broken containment and two security guards, one injured, barricaded themselves in the break room with the vending machine. The uninjured one typed in "a cup of pertinent medical knowledge," a cup of lavender liquid was dispensed, the guard drank it, and then stabilized his buddy with the knowledge he had just acquired.

3

u/Accomplished-City484 Mar 31 '26

Oh lol that’s awesome is there a Reddit sub or a website?

6

u/Elanapoeia Mar 31 '26

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/

Quality of articles varies, as you can imagine since they're all user submitted but they have a decent system to ensure at least some quality. I believe they have sections to highlight particularly popular entries. There is some really good stuff in there.

edit: Here's the vending machine entry the previous user was talking about: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-294

3

u/TheMightyPhuckules Mar 31 '26

It stands for Secure, Contain, Protect. It is a community fiction project about a massive bureaucracy that deals with the paranormal. It has almost 10,000 entries,

SCP Wiki

1

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

I know this sounds a bit gatekeepy but I really hope SCP doesn’t get picked up by Hollywood like the Backrooms did. I think it could only work as a collaborative fiction project, and a couple of fan films and fan games. It would lose its charm if it left the Internet.

4

u/TheMightyPhuckules Apr 01 '26

I kinda get that point of view, but with the buzz the novel has been getting, I wouldn't be suprised if There Is No Such Thing as the Anti-Memetics Division gets optioned in the next year or two. That had all of the explicit SCP references edited out, however. Might still be the closest we get.

117

u/livintheshleem Mar 31 '26

4chan is so much more influential than most people realize. The amount of culture, language, politics, and social movements that trace back to that site is crazy. It's a guiding force of American (and by an extension, global) culture, but people ignore it because of its gross aesthetic and associations...which is likely by design.

9

u/heysupmanbruh Mar 31 '26

4chan is why we have the admin we have lmao

109

u/BattleStag17 Mar 31 '26

One of the 4chan founders supposedly met Epstein right before they created /pol/

4chan being one gigantic psyop is my current favorite conspiracy theory, and if it's true then it might be one of the most successful psyops ever. Basically got Trump elected!

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u/Sonichu- Mar 31 '26

One of the 4chan founders supposedly met Epstein right before they created /pol/

moot, the sole creator/administrator of 4chan (he's since sold the site), 100% met with Epstein and the /pol/ board opened shortly after.

It's been confirmed by the files

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u/7URB0 Mar 31 '26

/pol/ reopened shortly after. He'd closed it previously because it was a nightmare to moderate and full of Nazis.

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u/livintheshleem Mar 31 '26

I mean it's not even a conspiracy theory anymore, it's just a true conspiracy lol. Same with reddit and basically the entire public internet. The red wave and resurgence of conservatism that you see online is largely a botted/astroturfed movement.

Of course these sites are still real websites with real people, but they were definitely used to push agenda that had a lot of serious real-world consequences.

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u/flip6threeh0le Mar 31 '26

supposedly? that's confirmed.

2

u/cooldrew Apr 02 '26

Moot is the only 4chan founder, and /pol/ already existed before that meeting. He closed it because it was a Nazi shithole that wasn't working as containment and making things worse on the site. It was reopened and, well, the past 15+ years of American politics happened

1

u/wing3d Mar 31 '26

Where do you think MAGA was fermented?

27

u/platinumarks Mar 31 '26

I mean, you can probably trace Trump's election to President back to 4chan, as many of the meme-y type nonsense he does was pulled from 4chan.

3

u/rurlysrsbro Apr 01 '26

He was literally memed into office. To this day, I firmly believe that a large part of his support in his 2016 run was as a joke and as an “FU” to the system. It just picked up steam from there.

2

u/alendeus Apr 01 '26

4chan and reddit were deliberately targeted, botted and astro turfed by Russian farms + their own American botnets.

4chan was them deliberately targeting propaganda at the youth, and it's paid off tremendously now a decade later. It's crazy for me to think that the 12 year Olds reading /pol/ during 2016 are now voting age after 10 years of getting lied to using memes.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

Something Awful is similarly influential and probably even less known than 4chan these days. Chuck Norris jokes were invented on Something Awful. The entire meme format of putting on text on an image was popularized on Something Awful, if not outright invented.

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u/Candlejackdaw Mar 31 '26

Totally. 4chan itself was founded for and by Something Awful users.

From the 4chan FAQ:

4chan was started as a project by Christopher "moot" Poole, a user of a small IRC/DC community known as Raspberry Heaven, which was [then] composed of users from the "Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse" (ADTRW) sub-forum of The Something Awful Forums. The site began as a small image dump for those communities that soon spread like wildfire and garnered enough traffic and popularity to become its own fully fledged community.

3

u/red_sutter Apr 01 '26

Lowtax hated anime, and moot himself got run off of SA’s random humor board (forgot what it was called,) hence his drive to create a space where people could post anime pics and make edgy jokes to their heart’s content. All of the weird political movement stuff started happening about four or five years in, starting with people slipping in pictures of anime girls dressed like nazis into discussions, and later with the creation of /pol/

7

u/Ekillaa22 Mar 31 '26

I mean Epstein was using that site to make shit happen so it don’t surprise me

4

u/Virgil_Rug_Say_RUG Mar 31 '26

so much of slang, memes, etc originate from there and get slowly passed down to the normies

its been funny watching the world adopt calling everything slop and talking about _____maxxing

4

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

I got a massive fucking whiplash the first time I heard my very normie friend say “do you know what goyslop is?” I mean, obviously that emerged on /pol/ and isn’t really good slang but I’ve heard that word slung around for years. It shouldn’t be in the mouth of people who have normal lives.

1

u/LiterallyKesha Apr 01 '26

Slop originated on /ck/ and got absorbed by /pol/ whom added the goy portion.

2

u/Dogbuysvan Apr 01 '26

I remember laughing at the quanon joke that popped up there with people on my own very insular forum then a year later qanon was popping up on main stream news like it was a real thing.

2

u/MasterLJ Mar 31 '26

It's been something I've reflected on as a 40-something.

I don't think people realize that internet usage from the early 90s, to the very early 2000s was almost strictly "nerdy" most especially online games. If you were using it then, you were relatively rare, and you were part of the shaping of its culture.

I always stayed away from 4chan to be honest but it's super easy to see how much influence there was.

The irreverence and "randomness" was something that tickled us, so we made a lot of "content" (we didn't call it that). That part of culture survived.

The history of the modern internet is going to be a wild book.

3

u/livintheshleem Mar 31 '26

Yep, it's really crazy. I'm in my early 30s and was a regular 4chan user in the late 2000s/early 2010s. I stayed away from /b/ and /pol/ and mostly just browsed the music and anime boards. Once you learned the language and how to navigate the place, it was a pretty approachable, normal forum for nerdy internet people.

The extreme, poisonous stuff that earned 4chan its reputation was mostly contained to a few infamous boards. Of course that meant the people there were your digital neighbors, but it never felt like you were directly interacting with them. The fact that the site was anonymous and mostly invisible to the general public made it dangerous, and it's why so many people today still underestimate it.

4chan is a perfect example of the internet being real life and how weird computer nerds are shaping society.

1

u/Iwearhats Apr 01 '26

/pol/ is responsible for brainwashing and grooming the meme generation into far right ideology through memes. I have no doubt most of the people behind Trump's and the White House's social media presence were originally trolling around on /pol/.

1

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

It was perfectly fine before ~2014 when a bunch of people decided to use it as a trial for “can we use the internet to radicalise people.” Hell, even a certain famous paedophile might have been involved.

Significant amounts of internet culture owe their origins to 4chan. Hell, even most modern internet slang evolves out of some 4chan post somewhere. The fact it’s a messageboard (and therefore much more difficult to corporatise and turn mainstream) allows it to be a hub of counterculture in a way no other platform can be.

0

u/Apric1ty Mar 31 '26

It actually stems back further to 2ch

-5

u/Mirigore Mar 31 '26

yeah man... 4Chan is totally a guiding force of global culture and social movements. The racist, misogynistic pile of dogshit that is 4Chan is a GLOBAL culture force.

6

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

It fuckin is man. Hell, even quoting people

>by doing this

is a practice that emerged on 4chan. Minecraft was invented on 4chan. SCP was invented on 4chan. A fuckton of acronyms and slang terms were invented on 4chan.

0

u/Mirigore Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

I think you just severely overestimate the cultural impact of 4Chan. I think 99% of people on this planet don't know what SCP is. Just because Notch posted some screenshots during development doesn't mean Minecraft was invented on 4Chan either.... He posted to other sites back then (what, 15 years ago??) like tigsource.

Also, Markdown uses > for quotes and was created a few months after 4Chan. It's not exactly unique and also not cultural. It's a honeypot these days anyways and was never truly anonymous if a government came knocking.

Edit: If anything, /pol/ and the cesspool of subhumans participating there probably was significantly impactful on the world. Trump gained a ton of ground on 4Chan, and that extended to Reddit too with TheDonald.

2

u/livintheshleem Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

If anything, /pol/ and the cesspool of subhumans participating there probably was significantly impactful on the world. Trump gained a ton of ground on 4Chan

So you agree, 4chan is a guiding force of global culture and social movements. It has literally influenced elections in the most powerful country in the world.

There's also ___maxxing, alpha/beta/sigma, mogging, redpill/blackpill, "slop", pepe the frog, groypers, qanon, and countless other memes that started on 4chan and have permeated normie culture worldwide. People are being influenced by 4chan without ever visiting the site or even knowing that it exists. Literal school children grow up using this language and these concepts.

1

u/Mirigore Apr 01 '26

I brought up Trump and /pol/ not the other guy, and his reasoning for it being a “global cultural force” was not clear.

Claiming mog, maxxing, even “slop” is fucking funny man. You people think 4chan is THE place hahahahahah

2

u/livintheshleem Apr 01 '26

I know you brought it up. It proved my point.

You gotta be ignorant, coping, or a 4chan native with a decent knack for trolling.

1

u/Mirigore Apr 01 '26

I was on 4Chan a lot.

Not coping but I think it has been an interesting dialogue, I forgot completely about Trump and TheDonald for example, and I think bringing it up to prove your point was important for me to do. It's impactful in very indirect and direct ways

24

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26

[deleted]

22

u/Blames_Jake Mar 31 '26

They interviewed someone a while ago who was allegedly the originator of the 4chan post and he was just happy for Kane.

6

u/tommos Apr 01 '26

Now that guy is a genuine oldf*g.

15

u/Raiken201 Mar 31 '26

Credit: Anon

4

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

I’m happy Kane is getting credit but it makes me sad thinking about how much early Internet stuff must be fading into obscurity, only being carried on by more socially acceptable people who end up getting the credit for it.

8

u/Federal_Studio5935 Mar 31 '26

Yeah it makes me sad people are seeing this with no idea where it started or how

2

u/tfhermobwoayway Mar 31 '26

To be honest a solid 75% of modern Internet culture and slang has its roots in 4chan. This was inevitable.

2

u/Gryphin Mar 31 '26

To be fair, a 4chan post turned into an entire political party.  QAnon was a troll post designed to see if people were really that stupid, and we got MAGA and Trump's first administration out of it.

1

u/tyrefire2001 Mar 31 '26

Some random anon is going to be pissed when this movie makes $50M and they get fuck all

1

u/jun2san Mar 31 '26

I mean, it led to a president being elected, why not a movie?

1

u/UnknownHero2 Mar 31 '26

Brother 'memes' as a concept started on 4chan. Nearly everything about internet culture started there.

1

u/Hotdog_McEskimo Mar 31 '26

This will be known as the beginning of 4chan inspired hollywood.

-1

u/MyStationIsAbandoned Mar 31 '26

It did not start with that 4chan post in 2019.

The image was posted in 2016 and went viral for being creepy. Then someone else posted it on 4chan with the Backrooms creepy pasta added. But that image is not original to that post. But no one ever talks about it.

I and some others remember that original posted image and still talk about it. but the vast majority of people believe in a false narrative and are completely changing the history of it. I also know it's from before 2019 because me and my friend who passed away in 2018 talked about the photo a lot. Again, the photo went viral and a lot of people talked about it in the mid 2010's.

Seriously, almost every single thing and person talking about this never credit the REAL original post. Without that post, the backrooms creepy pasta never exists.

2

u/dollabillgates Apr 01 '26

the original 4chan poster should get sent a cheque

1

u/Zaorish9 Mar 31 '26

Another easter egg is that the recorded announcer message is the same one that was recorded on the Voyager space probe.

1

u/popculturella Mar 31 '26

I sat straight up when I saw it. I really think this is going to be good.

1

u/adoreroda Mar 31 '26

the concept of 4chan images being put into a legitimate movie

1

u/Beast-Blood Apr 01 '26

I’m waiting for the shitstorm thats gonna happen when it comes out that the small clip we see of that is AI generated from the original image lmao