The backrooms as a "thought-form" or tulpa
Okay so in preparation for the backrooms movie I've been talking a lot with people about the backrooms and watching lore videos and I've seen a lot of interpretations but for me a big idea has kind of felt missing in a lot of theories I've read and that might just be because I'm not looking hard enough but a potential origin for the backrooms seems pretty similar to this idea from another analog horror series called GREYLOCK but just extrapolated a bit.
GREYLOCK centered around the idea of "thought-forms" (tulpas), which, in that series, were entities essentially created by an intense concentration of psychic energy on a single thing, in that things like spirit animals could be created by people if they spent a lifetime meditating and focusing on it. This basic idea seems like it can really relate to the origin of the backrooms with Kane Pixels especially with the line from the trailer about the way that it "remembers" things.
I'll lay out my idea here first and then get into why I think it might work this way. Basically, my thinking is that the backrooms itself is not a living entity, it in and of itself does not actually remember things, however, memory is a driving force in the creation of the backrooms. This is because the backrooms act as basically a well of psychic energy in Kane Pixel's world. It might sound kind of far-fetched, but with the way that the backrooms creates these different places and the contradictions in their exactness, this makes sense to me. To make my idea more clear, the backrooms is basically a giant thought-form that is created by the overlap of billions of people's memories of the world.
There are two things that stick out to me about the backrooms that make it hard to define it's origin. The first is that the backrooms is effectively another dimension, but it obviously takes inspiration not only strictly from effectively human creations and perspectives, but also the things that we see in the backrooms are very modern, with the primary imagery being that of an old office building. This effectively means that we can eliminate the idea that the backrooms are some kind of ancient alternate dimension that has existed as long as the world has, or at the very least that in some way the backrooms changes to reflect more modern eras, as opposed to retaining things like old medieval castles.
The other thing is also tied to this, but it's the idea of memory and what details the backrooms itself seems to "remember". For example, in one of the videos we see a recreation of a house that we also see in the real world through a photograph, however the house itself is incredibly limited in its recreation, with only things like a banister remaining and the rest of the house being fairly empty. However, despite this, we do see a painting in that house which looks exactly like its real world counterpart, therefore creating this contradiction in which we have a house that doesn't reflect what it should look like which contains a painting that looks exactly as it should.
My idea here was really solidified for me with the trailer in which the main guy starts talking about how the more times something is remembered, its counterpart in the backrooms becomes less and less accurate. If the backrooms is essentially being created by everyone's memory of something, this makes perfect sense. The backrooms wells all of the memories and thoughts of things like neighborhoods, or office spaces, but it only keeps the commonalities between different people's memories, so for example a million people might remember their office with yellow wallpaper and gross carpet, each person with their own memories of what the furniture in there looked like or what the floorplan was, but the thing that actually gets built up in the backrooms is just the commonality, that yellow wallpaper and musty carpet.
When people remember more specific things those things become more accurate, like the neighborhoods we see in certain videos looking a lot more defined, because people remember the layout of their suburban street, but the insides being weird because it's pulling the houses and the street and the layout but each person is remembering a different inside, and when too many memories overlap you get weird distortions like street signs showing up not on the street but in the house next to the street. Thus, the more that the backrooms "remembers", the less that it actually does remember.
One essential component of this theory is that "null zones" are effectively epicenters of psychic energy, with the proximity to a null zone creating sharper, more accurate memories that are reflected in the backrooms, and the further you are from a null zone, you'll find less accurate translations. This is essential to explain why exactly the house in found footage #3 was so similar looking to an actual house, and why it retained so many specific details.
Caveats/issues:
Why do we see office spaces as the primary content of the backrooms instead of things like bars, streets, parks, etc. and for that matter why do we only see man-made imitations of nature instead of real depictions of grass, trees, etc. if the formation of the backrooms derives from memory? People remember those things more fondly and therefore focus more psychic energy on them as opposed to the office that they work in.
This is a fair point, as far as I'm concerned most people are going to be more likely to try to forget their office than they are to spend a lot of time thinking about it. I think that the answer here is part of my previous answer but to be more specific, the Backrooms are effectively the psychic dregs that bubble their way down into the earth instead of taking presence in the mind, or being concentrated into the world like a thought-form, or as part of a manifestation, or a dream. The Backrooms are the things that you kind of don't really remember, the background of your memories that you just forget about. Thus, we see places like your office, your house, your neighborhood, places that are definitely in your memory, but not places you focus your thoughts on because you're always there. We don't see parks or monuments or those kinds of things because they're the objects of your thoughts in primary, they're where you actively channel your psychic energy. The backrooms is everything else.
What's going on with the bacteria then? That doesn't seem like something that would be formed out of some kind of collective consciousness.
True, not sure how widely recognized this is but to my knowledge the bacteria is most likely something that entered the backrooms and mutated inside, not something produced by the backrooms itself. The backrooms did not create the bacteria.
Okay but it seems like the Backrooms did create that weird "still-life" thing, right? What's up with that?
Per this theory, the still-life to me seems like a mix of two things, that being people's memories of other people, which it seems the Backrooms struggles to create as we only see one of them (will expand), and fear in general. For this explanation I'm going to rely a lot on the information that I understand about thought-forms so bear with me. First off, I think that the Backrooms generally creates inanimate things because that is what's easiest, it's a static thing that can just be generated and then no further work or energy is required. Living things on the other hand are likely difficult to create because they require a lot of complex functions in order to sustain themselves and to move, thus it is rare that the Backrooms will be capable of generating "life". This is backed up by the basis of thought-forms, which, while having a lot of different interpretations, but the one that I'm generally relying on is from the book called Thought-Forms (not very creative I know). This book presents the idea that some thought-forms are easier to create than others, and one of the agreed upon concepts of thought-forms is that in order to create living entities, it takes an incredible amount of concentrated psychic energy and meditation. This is, specifically, active meditation from a single person on a specific idea, which eventually culminates in an entity. This is the exact opposite of what I propose the Backrooms is, as per my theory the Backrooms is the information in the back of your mind that you don't focus on. I think, thus, the most common living thing that people think about in the back of their memories is...other people! We all kind of have a general sense of how other people work, and other people are always going to show up in people's memories, walking around the office, walking past you on the street. The still-life is the culmination of that. Hence why it looks like a person, but very distorted in the classic Backrooms manner. This is also why we hear it knocking on the door, because it retains concepts of things like door-to-door salesmen, and therefore the general idea that when approaching a door, you knock on it to get in. But also, not really, right? Because in your memories those people aren't charging at you and screaming. That's why I think that two different concepts effectively got merged to create the still-life, that being people, and fear of people in general. The underlying fear that you have of people when you're walking down the street at night that someone might rob you, or murder you, the general fear of death that every human has. I think that made the still-life into what it is, almost a person, but not quite, that attacks people because of the fear of being attacked. I'll admit this part is shaky but if you squint we can pretend.
TLDR; The Backrooms is created from the psychic energy derived from the subconscious part of your memories, the background stuff. The more people remember a thing, the more memories overlap, and thus only the commonalities shine through, creating really really simplified spaces like the yellow wallpaper.
There are probably more things that I should caveat right now but also this is a really long post and I'd rather just answer any questions directly rather than trying the procataleptic stuff. Let me know what you think about this, if this is already a common theory let me know that I'm mega unoriginal that's my bad. Thanks for reading this far, or at least reading the TLDR.