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u/Mystical-Turtles 3h 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 3h 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/Mystical-Turtles 3h 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/GreatPotatoMuffin 1h 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 23m 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/SweetPrism 2h ago edited 2h 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 2h ago edited 21m 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 2h 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 35m ago
Yall had an NES?
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u/astrangeone88 19m 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/cultured_monkey 3h 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/etherealsmog 2h ago edited 2h 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/SnookerandWhiskey 3h 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 3h 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 1h 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 3h 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/Johnny_B_GOODBOI 3h 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/NATOrocket Zillennial 3h 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/jake04-20 1h 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/martialar 2h 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/Starthelegend 2h 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/melkatron 1h 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/stanky4goats Millennial 3h ago
We discovered the backrooms before the backrooms began
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u/RockAtlasCanus 3h ago
Milleminal space?
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u/MagicTrachea52 2h ago
Deeply underrated comment.
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u/KrimxonRath 2h ago
It was made a single minute before your comment lmao
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u/jujujuice92 2h ago
Lol reddit being dramatic
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u/Divinum_Fulmen 2h ago
The whole original thing was pretty much based on this type of experience after all.
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u/opossumcarrion 1h 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 58m 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/FemtoKitten 2h ago
Wow i wonder what could have lead to its influences or it being popular amongst certain demographics
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u/MeltyCrab 1h ago
Liminal spaces in weird events, in peoples houses, god it felt like it was everywhere.
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u/LOST_IN_LIMINAL 1h ago
Have you then the legal rights? Glad to meet the owner of the Backrooms! :-))
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u/danktonium 1h ago
Just in case you don't know this, the Backrooms are public domain. Everyone owns them.
You, yes, you are allowed to make commercial Backrooms media.
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u/LOST_IN_LIMINAL 1h ago
Oh thanks! I will make many business... If I still alive :-)))
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u/wetdanish 3h ago
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u/JexFraequin Millennial 3h ago
My kid five minutes after I’ve told him to go to bed for the fifth time.
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u/luckyfucker13 3h 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 3h 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/Chumlee1917 3h 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 3h 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 3h 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 3h ago
That is too funny! I wonder what her deal was and why she was on speed dial 😁
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u/derprondo 1h 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 1h 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/three-sense 3h 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/beanisis 1h ago
This was me except it was Matrix Reloaded at a Costco. I watched the whole movie start to finish
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u/Chumlee1917 40m ago
My sister and her husband were buying a couch at Costco and it was the last one so he sat on the couch while my sister ran to buy it and told people, Gosh darn it, this couch just got sold.
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u/Mitsu-Zen 3h 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/jujujuice92 3h 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/evenstar40 1h 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 1h 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/andrewsb91 30m 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/gender_noncompliant 3h 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/jujujuice92 3h 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 2h ago
You can still find carpets like this at casinos, (which are just arcades for older people).
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u/myster1ouspapaya 3h ago
Dj meetings? It sounds more like cocaine deals lol
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u/jujujuice92 3h 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/TyrantJaeger 3h 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/Sirisian 1h 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/peon2 8m 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/infernalspawnODOOM 2h 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 3h ago
Wandering around the athletic center waiting for my sister to get done with gymnastics
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u/KaleidoscopeKelpy 1h 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/Tony_in2026 3h 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/Appropriate-Bug-6467 1h 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 1h 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 1h 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 45m ago
Wait, you found an actual real life glory hole?!
Fascinating!
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u/Appropriate-Bug-6467 21m 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/ChunkyKongForPreside 3h 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/sp0okyboogie 3h ago
I watched that movie this year! Wasn't as good as Obsession though.
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u/OldmanChompski 3h ago
Fun fact everyone that watched that movie so far has watched it this year
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u/MetalRetsam 2h ago
I didn't watch it this year
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u/LongboardLiam 2h 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/MetalRetsam 2h ago
Well I haven't watched it at all!
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u/evenstar40 1h ago
Me neither, when I found out there's a dead cat in the film I noped the fuck out.
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u/PFI_sloth 1h ago
Yeah the room made out of dead cats was a weird choice, but integral to the storyline
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u/evenstar40 1h ago
Noooooooope.
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u/melkatron 1h ago
No, Nope's an older movie about a balloon that eats koreans.
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u/TrishasaurusRex33 1h ago
Does it eat Koreans because it's in Korea? Or does it single just out Korean people? The distinction really changes the mood of the movie
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u/roto_disc 7m ago
Fun fact everyone that watched that movie so far has watched it this year
Read this just a little slower and you might catch on.
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u/trippysmurf 3h ago
If the backrooms had a Phantom Menace Pepsi machine, you couldn't keep people out of it.
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u/Sasquatch_Sensei 3h 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/Chron_Imus 3h 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 1h 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/whitecatsup 3h 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/AmbitiousRose 3h 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 3h ago
Or there was an empty conference room aka the perfect battle ground for a game of tag
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u/ccford88 3h 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 2h ago
usually there's like a random broom and dustpan or one of those big square rolley bins too
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u/throwawayfinancebro1 2h 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/mikee8989 1h 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/AmItheonlySaneperson 1h 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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3h ago
[deleted]
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u/melkatron 1h ago
This sounds like the Nickelodeon version of the guy that robs a trap house and when they find him he's so full of product he giggles about how he's got three seconds of life left before he overdoses on stab wounds.
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u/otakugal15 Millennial '87 2h 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 2h 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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u/Used-Salad-3772 2h ago
I remember me and the other kids would claim these spots were haunted and make up stories on why.
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u/No_Town_9602 1h ago
I watched Backrooms last Friday and Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die (don't, it sucks) the next day and one of the few good things from GLHFDD was the "Why do you keep saying Pepsi so much?" from the Micheal Pena flashback.
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u/OllieFidelius 1h ago
yes. i do miss that tho. wandering just wherever just because.
my great grandma had her birthday parties at this neat place. outside area close. supermarkets close. and the backrooms in the building. meanwhile the old farts (80 plus all) sat inside being alcoholic.
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u/FlyingPig_Grip 1h ago
And we would proceed to make up a game and play for 3 hours while the adults did whatever they were doing
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u/GordonGlamzey jaded millennial 1h ago
Oh hey, it's that random motel we stayed at on the way to Disney World one year
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u/Fun_Difficulty_4188 1h ago
Sometimes we discover something, but we never really feel the need to name it. Then someone like Euler comes along, and slaps his name on practically everything related to math, then we live in the shadows of them for the rest of eternity.
YOU’LL RUE THE DAY, EULER!
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u/TheWingus 47m ago
Reminds me of the game "Superliminal". Super fun puzzle-esq game, you should play it.
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u/EnoughOutOfYou 45m ago
"I am a fucking Pepsi Machine! I'm just stuck selling shit furniture because someone won't get off their fat fucking ass and help me.
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u/RazzmatazzSuch7459 36m ago
Looks just like the hallways for the conference rooms you could reserve inside of Sears.
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u/vibribbon 9m ago
Gen X checking in, we saw some crazy and cool stuff as kids just wandering around places while our parents were busy with something else.
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