Seriously though, why is there something borderline psychoactive about this specific set of motifs? Why pools? Why no windows? Why the pastel colours? It feels suspiciously like an arbitrary code execution exploit on the human mind.

Imagine sliding down this AI generated slide and slamming your AI generated nuts into this ai generated bar and feeling immensely AI generated ballpain

Warm, wet, childish, rounded, enclosed, ambient noise... It's a womb. You are in a place you were never meant to return to. You encounter a dissonance. A synthetic analog. A space within which a human feels most safe, except there is no mother's body, you are alone. The ancient part of your brain registers safety and comfort. The younger part of your brain registers the discrepancy, the lack of exit, the illogical nature of your environment.

Made one. Added a clown for good measure.

This is one of the other levels, remember?

I've had dreams about this shit, wtf

That doesn’t seem like the best pole placement…

It is similar to things that exist but don’t actually. It sits in an uncanny valley of something that possible and familiar, but never was. Like a manifestation of déjà vu. It hits a nostalgic feeling while being eerily empty.

It's just 80's and 90's aesthetics with a cool filter. We all grew up going to waterparks so there's the subconscious nostalgia. A lot of "liminal" stuff is just nostalgia for an era that will never exist again.

>devoid of people >eerie sense waterparks, offices, etc, are the perfect place to accentuate this, helps find that uncanny valley by tricking your expecations

liminal spaces, backrooms type shit

I’ll give it a shot. The water with no windows — brain identifies drowning risk. As for the pastel colors, the brain identifies something is off. This sort of water/plumbing exists only in a dark sewer setting, but the pastels add color which is uncanny.

It’s called “backroom” aesthetic

liminal space identifiers + juxtaposition of 90s nostalgia

I think is specific to a set of people remember a time visiting the pubic pool or a public bath, passing through the shower area, hearing the splashing of the pool behind the corridor leading from the wash room that always had this type of tile work, smelling the chlorine

This is your early childhood memory of bath time with all your colorful toys.

It goes deeper....

I think it has to do with early memory formation. Take a small child to an indoor pool and they will struggle with the sounds, strange lighting, reflections, humidity, smell. It's a completely different environment than any other. Someone presenting something that looks similar to an indoor pool and giving off a confusing/foreign vibe is very close to replaying those earliest experiences.

There's a good essay somewhere about the backrooms and how it represents a future that failed to materialize. There used to be more public playgrounds with slides etc. Spaces like this feel like the labyrinth of memory where they've been stored

To me, it’s a trapped feeling. Claustrophobic. Almost like an impending doom.

the water is also too shallow, some of the slides come out of holes too small for humans, the emptiness, the narrow passageways are more sewer-like, and actually the shallowness is kinda sewer-like as well. This is basically a sewer done up in pastel with slides.

vaporwave aesthetic (not sure why that is so pleasing, that itself could use a breakdown), pools/slides lots of great memories for most, lastly the no-windows, a sense of mystery, exploring a vast underground system that yet is still safe and fun bc rubber duckies

I'm impressed with some of the renderings of liminal space horror. It triggers feelings of claustrophobia and hopelessness, just like the abandoned mall / resort / amusement park genre. Also, things like Simon Stålenhag's "The Electric State". Concentrated alienation.

Word posters serve no value to society

Gives me ‘Backrooms’ vibes

How would you know, before posting it, if you found something that generalizes vs. unintentionally revealing something about your own brain? (All this does for me is trigger an extremely strong recollection of chlorine smell and humidity.)

idk, this isn't a full explanation but part of it's that it walks a very fine line between being comfortingly nostalgic and having a sinister undercurrent. very engaging on the coziness and the eeriness axes simultaneously.

idk why but pastel poolrooms hit the childhood memory syscall

Because this is what they used to activate mk ultra sleepers when conducting “gifted” testing on children in school.

Arbitrary code execution exploit is a good way to describe it. It’s an amalgamation of things that you spend your whole life knowing don’t go together

This that backrooms shit right here

tbh i think a lot of this doesn’t really have the right vibe. but these indoor pools have a very specific evocative vibe, the smell, the humidity, echoing sound, strong memories of the past, also immersing in water is itself a classic liminal experience (baptism etc)

I just…don’t get that profound of an effect

Have you read Piranesi?

Fixed it

All I know is that I had dreams about the poolrooms and similar liminal spaces long before they became a meme. I have no way of explaining it.