this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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What even is a liminal space? Seriously, I looked up the definition and still don’t know.
by definition it's a between space, like going from one place to another. in practice it's a space that should have people in it but doesn't. think an empty mall or indoor swimming pool.
the backrooms are probably the most popular example of a liminal space
In the basic definition, it's a space between spaces. A space that only exists for you to move from one space to another. Like a corridor or stairway. Somewhere you're not meant to stay.
It's definitely been co-opted to mean "a creepy place".
An empty walkway between the gallery and the auditorium at a theatre generally could be considered one. The emptyness being key here. With lots of people around it's fine.
I wonder what cleaners feel in these places.
https://lemmy.world/c/liminalspace
You watched Severance? Many of the areas in the show are liminal spaces. Always a bit creepy and odd and something just feels off when you're in them. You can't put your finger on what it is but it's not quite right.
I think I just don't have the liminal space gene. I've watched Severance and have seen a ton of other spaces people call liminal but I've never felt anything creepy or unsettling about them at all.
It’s a space that has no purpose except transit. Therefore there is no thought of comfort in its design. When you see these spaces your brain has a reaction of “getting through it as soon as possible”. There is probably also something in our ancient survival instinct that lingering in open space like that could be fatal.
I know what they are. They still don't work on me.
Have you frequently moved house, moved to new homes, apartments, lived in a car, anything like that? Hiked a long ways, for a long while?
I was homeless for some years... and yeah... almost everywhere you are is a liminal space, and eventually... it all becomes just another space, it loses that kind of strangeness, as you spend more and more time in places you're not really meant to be in, and the places you think you can stay in, well, they turn out to be hostile and temporary too.
limen was the Latin term for "threshold"
It came from a 4chan creepypasta about noclipping out of reality
My personal guess was the writer was a philosophy of mind student or psychiatry student - the most likely place a young person would encounter the term.
This should help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp-2M_3HwFU
A liminal space is some sort of locale that we usually only experience in states of transience, where staying is strange. Something that represents a border or state that you simply pass through between two more permanent states. Waiting for the bus at night. Your residence just before dawn. An empty mall or office building where there are only remanent signs of human presence. The in-dev version of a video game where characters are either absent or just placeholders.
gm_bigcity. All the Kane Pixels shit. A place where reality feels slightly altered, and your subconscious is ringing all of the alarm bells because existing there is just wrong.The subway station in the Matrix 3.
The ultimate liminal space that only exists to represent a place that is transitted through, yet is also infinite in space and time if you do not essentially possess the key to actually leave.
I guess arguably, any repeated timeloop type of movie essentially turns most of the world into a defacto liminal space.
But yeah, most literally, a liminal space is a space designed to be moved through, not inhabited.
A doorway or hallway vs a room.
A waiting room at a doctor's office, a queue at an airport.
A highway, bridge, or train tracks, vs wherever they are leading you to.
In your case its that empty space within your brain that should be filled with thoughts and imagination but is just a long gray hallway with a few abandoned preshool desks and offsetting green fluorescent lighting flickering.