kenopsia, liminal spaces, malls, nostalgia, the end of retail

Sometime last year was when I think the Internet's fascination with "liminal spaces" reached its peak, mostly with the "backrooms" greentext reaching tumblr, youtube, twitter, etc., and in context I think the fascination with images like that of the backrooms makes perfect sense. It ties deeply with the Y2K nostalgia of today's gen Z and millenials, part of a greater nostalgia wave that exploded with the 2015-2017 vaporwave phenomenon and has only grown since. It’s literally everywhere, seen in the tastes of Depop’s top thrift resellers, the ridiculous value of 1st-gen Pokemon cards, the front page of Netflix overtaken by reboots and reunions of every single 90’s sitcom. The saying “everything old is new” has been taken to the extreme, and there is nothing interesting except for the old. Modern stuff is a bore; it’s the “startup aesthetic”, its what you see while working your middle-of-the-ladder office job. It’s the clean, redesigned bank app telling you with a smile that you’ve overdrafted once again. It reeks of passive-aggressive HR manager and unbearable social media marketer. If you could, you would run away from all that and embrace the colorful and fantastic designs that built the physical and digital places you used to play in.

Nintendo 64 kiosk at a McDonald's I stumbled upon a McDonalds with a Nintendo 64 setup. I'm mildly entertained... : retrogaming

I remember my obsession with vaporwave in high school extending to the adjacent fascination of abandoned malls and the way they were empty remnants of 80s/90s/00s culture, designed with the optimistic vision of being a new social space focused on coolness and having a good time. As the 2010s progressed and especially as online shopping has become the norm, it was hard to ignore that visiting the mall was becoming less and less a desired experience in American middle class life. Malls started to fade away in a way they were never supposed to; its depressing to see these once inviting places, built on massive plots of land in probably the most commercially viable locations in their regions, now be taken over by supermarket chains and/or becoming vacant hallways of nothingness, as smaller stores and restaurants get driven out by greedy mall owners and rising leases. As the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic came and went, it has plunged the knife far deeper into the already-dying mall, finishing off countless chains that were already on their last legs, some of them given a swan song as sheltered waiting areas for long vaccination lines.

abandoned mall Tweet by @SpaceLiminalBot

Observation of the continuing "abandoned mall" phenomenon was the root of a fascination that, tied in with "cursed" meme culture, broadened into a general fascination with abandoned architecture similar to malls, where the interior is more a highway or "hub" to transition people from one "real" place to another - the mall, for example, serving as a hub to go between restaurants, shops, etc. - which extends to empty airports, school hallways, bus stops, old offices, amusement parks, and countless other settings where, I think the closest way to describe it is where it seems like an area was once of great use or desire to the public, but has since outlived its purpose.

(this next part is me trying to explain the nuances of this aesthetic without knowing that a word has already been invented for what I'm describing: kenopsia. In my opinion kenopsia is a much better descriptor for the aesthetic I'm describing rather than putting it all under the generic category of liminal spaces.)

This is the fascination that the internet likes to categorize as "liminal spaces", but it’s a bit more specific than that. Liminal spaces are everywhere; every time you walk through an airport or a hallway to go from one location to another that’s by definition a liminal space. In addition to being liminal, the spaces that interest internet people are almost always abandoned or otherwise empty (a popular subset I've noticed is when the space seems like its closed for the night, but the photographer is still inside, giving a vague sense that you're not supposed to be seeing this). There’s never anyone else around… no one you can see, at least. This emptiness brings a sense of dread to places where you might usually feel normal or even homely. This is arguably even more important to the phenomenon than actually being a liminal space, extending to pools, arcades, empty homes, etc. If you ever went to an arcade as a kid, think of the warm feeling you get from the swarm of sound effects, colorful lights and energetic crowds all around you. The “liminal spaces” phenomenon is revisiting that same place in a state you’re never supposed to see: deafening silence, there is no energy, everything has faded and the world has forgotten it.

This explanation makes liminal spaces seem scary or something to be avoided, but for me I have found a lot of calm and comfort in looking at them. I think a lot of the attraction lies in the unexpected familiarity of these spaces. What sets liminal spaces apart from the locations they bridge together is that they’re both invisible and omnipresent. You’re not really supposed to think about them, but if you and your online circle are confronted with them, you will all universally recognize them, and have a conscious thought about them for the first time even though they’ve always been in your lives.

The mall near my high school. Taken by me The mall near my high school. Taken by me

When I was a senior in high school my favorite pastime was to wander in the aisles without buying anything in the Target in the local mall by my high school. I would also walk around the mall’s perimeter and see where the cargo trucks dock in and where the shopping carts were stored. The mall had hidden entrances and a sealed-off section where you could sneak in and there were two abandoned stores and a brass water fountain. A couple times I went in the early morning and other times late at night and would have the entire building to myself save for one security guard at most. Even as a smaller mall, it felt vast and spaced out, like the inside a tall cathedral. To be honest I think it was built to handle much more traffic than it ever got usually. For each section of the mall it was like a massive hallway with stores on both sides, and you would only ever pass by like 3-4 people or a family at most.

It’s jarring to realize that some liminal spaces have begun to lose their importance in the past decade or so. I don’t go out much for mundane things anymore and neither do many other upper-middle-class Americans. When I lived in Manhattan I almost always get my groceries delivered to the door. For restaurants I pretty much only had the choice of getting it delivered due to pandemic shutdowns. I haven’t gotten clothes, towels, furniture, tools from anywhere except online for years now. I only ever have to go out to take out the trash or whenever I have a job that’s not online. Retail is either dying or, if it’s due for a revival, it will be mainly for the social contact that it once facilitated.

Nostalgia feels like a yin-yang of comfort and longing. It’s a lot more abstract than reminiscing on certain memories and more like a temporary mental escape to a more liberating mindset about life that I used to have. When the nostalgia goggles are strong I think about how far I’ve strayed from being an optimistic, enthusiastic kid who showed potential in many things.