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Partially FalseYouTube · General

No, Neither 'Obsession' Nor 'Backrooms' Started on YouTube — Here's Where They Actually Came From

“Both 'Obsession' and 'Backrooms' originated on YouTube”

The argument in brief

The claim is that both 'Obsession' and 'Backrooms' originated on YouTube. This is false for both. The Backrooms began as a single creepy image posted on 4chan in 2019, while 'Obsession' blew up as a TikTok trend in 2023 — YouTube played no role in either origin.

Why it spread

YouTube is the most visible home for internet culture content, so people naturally associate viral phenomena with it — especially when a YouTube creator like Kane Pixels made the Backrooms famous. If you discovered something through a YouTube video, it genuinely feels like that's where it began. That's an honest mistake, not a careless one.

The claim is that both internet phenomena — the eerie 'Backrooms' concept and the 'Obsession' audio trend — were born on YouTube. Neither one was. Getting the origin right matters because it shapes how we understand how internet culture actually spreads.

The Backrooms started on 4chan's paranormal board, /x/, in May 2019. Someone posted an unsettling photo of an empty, yellow-carpeted room and described it as a place you could fall into if you 'noclipped' out of reality. That single post, documented by Know Your Meme, sparked the entire mythology. YouTube came later.

YouTube's connection to the Backrooms is real but secondary. Creator Kane Pixels released a stunning found-footage series starting in 2022 that brought the concept to millions of new viewers, as The Atlantic noted in its deep-dive on the phenomenon. That series was so good and so widely seen that many people encountered the Backrooms there first — making YouTube feel like the source when it was actually the amplifier.

'Obsession' has an even cleaner answer: TikTok. The audio track became a defining sound of TikTok's NPC livestreaming craze in 2023, where creators mimicked robotic characters responding to viewer gifts. Know Your Meme traces its explosion directly to that platform. YouTube had little to do with it.

This kind of mix-up spreads because YouTube is where internet culture gets packaged into polished, easy-to-find videos. If you search for almost any meme or trend, YouTube will surface explainer videos, compilations, and fan content. That visibility makes it easy to confuse 'where I learned about this' with 'where this started.' When you see a claim about a meme's origin, it's worth checking a source like Know Your Meme, which traces the actual first post.

Sources

  • Know Your Meme - The Backrooms

    The Backrooms originated on 4chan's /x/ (paranormal) board in May 2019, when a user posted a creepy image of an empty yellow room with the caption describing it as 'the backrooms.' It was not originally a YouTube creation.

  • Know Your Meme - Obsession (NPC Meme / TikTok Trend)

    The 'Obsession' audio trend, associated with the NPC livestreaming phenomenon, gained massive popularity on TikTok, not YouTube, in 2023.

  • The Atlantic - The Backrooms Explained

    The Backrooms concept was born on 4chan in 2019 and later popularized through YouTube videos, most notably by Kane Pixels, but YouTube was not its origin point.

  • YouTube - Kane Pixels Backrooms

    Kane Pixels' found-footage Backrooms series on YouTube (starting 2022) massively amplified the Backrooms concept, which may lead people to associate its origin with YouTube, but the lore predates this by years.

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