When Kane Parsons uploaded the first episode of his YouTube series The Backrooms in January 2022, he had no idea he was launching a marketing campaign.
At the time, Parsons was a high schooler in Petaluma, California, testing out an animation in Blender. Within two weeks, the video hit 20 million views, and Parsons, now just 20 years old, kept posting.
The videos created an experimental visual world based off the existing internet urban legend of The Backrooms, an infinite series of rooms that descend and extend, with different floors playing host to different creatures and structures. They share a uniform drabness, similar to an office building, but are irrationally constructed and of unknown origin, giving the space a haunted feeling.
