# Wish you weren’t here: the dark tourism rise of nothingness

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/wish-you-werent-here-the-dark-tourism-rise-of-nothingness/
- Published: 2026-11-03T09:00:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-03T09:59:50+00:00
- Original publisher: Far Out
- Original article: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/wish-you-werent-here-dark-tourism-rise-of-nothingness/
- Topics: Culture, Travel

## Key points

- Backrooms tourism explores fictional, empty spaces online.
- The idea began with a 2019 4chan post.
- Its appeal is the unease and isolation it evokes.

## Summary

A niche form of online dark tourism is growing around the Backrooms, fictional, empty spaces that evoke unease and isolation. Unlike visits to sites of real disasters or atrocities, these explorations have no physical destination or historical context; their appeal lies in the feelings they create.

The Backrooms began with an anonymous image posted to 4chan in 2019, followed by online stories, videos and fan fiction that built a community around the idea. Lancaster University academics Sophie James and James Cronin call this “para-terrestrial dark tourism”: exploring places that seem real and human-made but exist outside reality. They suggest the imagined emptiness can offer a vivid sense of alienation and a temporary escape from everyday pressures.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.