Since you opened this article, we will assume that you use social media in some capacity. Who doesn’t nowadays anyway, right? Well, at least 5.07 billion people for sure do. Since there are so many users of the World Wide Web, there (almost) just as many niches you can discover.
One of the most popular niches in the last couple of years is the aesthetic trend. In a nutshell, it’s a form of identity expression that usually involves some kind of sharing on social media. For example, curated images, video edits, mood boards, memes, and playlists being posted online to evoke an aesthetically pleasing feeling.
The list of possible aesthetics is almost never-ending, as new ones keep getting added basically every day. Take this list as proof of that – it contains numerous names, from more mainstream ones like Y2K to lesser-known (at least to us) ones like Crowcore.
Today, we’re going to focus on only two aesthetics that, in a way, are interlinked with each other – liminal spaces and dreamcore.
The former refers to the images of empty, abandoned places that evoke eerie, surreal feelings, representing places of transition. Then, the latter is a surrealist aesthetic that uses motifs of dreams, daydreams, and/or nightmares.
So, imagine what would happen if you mixed them up – the images in today’s list are what you get. All of these were collected from an Instagram page called @liminal.dreamscape. The page, which posts images nearly daily, currently has a little over half a million followers. In other words, people who enjoy feeling both comforted and creeped out by the same image.
But why do these liminal spaces feel this way? As this Reddit user put it, “Scary because it’s empty without people. Comforting because it’s empty without people.” That is kind of an ingenious way to explain his phenomenon.
In a tad broader sense, some people describe a liminal space as a place between 'what was' and what will be 'next.' Essentially, it is a place of transition, waiting, not being in the know. It doesn’t even have to be a physical space – it can also be applied to emotional or even metaphorical places.
Emotional liminal space is where a person ends after life-altering events like graduation, divorce, and the death of a loved one to name a few. Metaphorical one refers to a time between two ideas. For example, when a person is making a decision, until they do, they’re in there.
So, the thing that connects all forms of liminal spaces is the unknown. The thing is that the unknown is one of the main sources of human fear – unpredictability tends to cause people discomfort. Thus, since that’s what the liminal spaces are based on, no wonder they make people rather uneasy.
Well, the popularity of pages like the one discussed today shows that sometimes people clearly crave something to make them a bit uncomfortable. Well, it’s no secret that some people like the rush that fear brings on, as the surge of adrenaline releases dopamine and serotonin to the brain, which makes us feel good. So, maybe indulging in some creepy images from time to time isn’t so bad, is it?
