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The Backrooms Became a Place Without Existing

Tourism researchers describe the participatory online myth as digital legend-tripping: people collectively visit, map and extend an impossible destination.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-07-26-027
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Summary

Tourism researchers describe the participatory online myth as digital legend-tripping: people collectively visit, map and extend an impossible destination.

An analysis in Annals of Tourism Research treats the Backrooms as a form of para-terrestrial or digital dark tourism. Instead of traveling to a physical haunted site, participants create stories, images, maps and games that make an invented liminal world feel visitable and collectively maintained. This is an interpretive tourism study, not evidence that the fictional place exists or a measurement of platform traffic.

Why it matters

Tourism researchers describe the participatory online myth as digital legend-tripping: people collectively visit, map and extend an impossible destination.

Limits and context

  • This is an interpretive tourism study, not evidence that the fictional place exists or a measurement of platform traffic.

Key claims

  1. Tourism researchers describe the participatory online myth as digital legend-tripping: people collectively visit, map and extend an impossible destination.

    Qualification: This is an interpretive tourism study, not evidence that the fictional place exists or a measurement of platform traffic.

    Evidence: source-2026-07-26-016

Sources

  1. ScienceDaily: The Backrooms as digital legend-trippingScienceDaily · secondary reporting

Corrections

No corrections have been recorded for this story.

The Backrooms Became a Place Without Existing · The Machine Press