u/mars_gorilla

Sorry Americans, you'll have to sit through this one. Be thankful you don't have to feel relevant about having these - you'll see why soon.

Let me tell you the first time in my living memory I used one of these. I was a wee lass, maybe 13 or 14 years old, going to Shanghai, China with my parents. After a bowl of noodles with questionable quality and hygiene, my stomach got the rumblies, so my parents sent me off to the loo on my own because I was "old enough to go myself".

I don't think I was, mum.

This goddamned PIT OF (metaphorical) HELL stared back at me when I opened the stall door. I checked the next stall. Same pit. I checked every stall. Same pit.

It is so. damn. HARD. To use these. You have to squat down fully, putting your entire weight on your legs which also have to be in front of your center of gravity because you need to actually move your pants out of the way of the falling shit. You feel like you're constantly falling backwards, using as much of your strength as possible to hold your pants out of the way of the torrent and to keep yourself upright, lest you end up sprawling across the pee-stained floor (I'll get to that). Meanwhile, you barely have ANY remaining core strength to actually, y'know, take a shit?! 90% of the time these stalls don't even have handlebars! You can't even hold onto the walls!

Pissing is just as bad. For men, you basically have to deal with the very real possibility that the piss that normally just goes on the side of the rim on a normal toilet can go straight on your pants, not to mention the damn splashback. And for women, well, you get to suffer the crouch for both number 1 AND 2! Fun! Moreover, because of this incredible challenge just to take a tinkle, most times the floor is COVERED in urine, making your already shaking body even more prone to slipping on the tiles and taking an unwated shower in other people's waste!

I am livid that these things still exist and that we still have to use them. UPGRADE YOUR DAMN TOILETS, PEOPLE.

Like, I watched both the film and Jacob on Game Changer, but I never even made the mental connection between the two because I had seen them maybe a decade apart

Inspired by both the recent trend on Twitter of creating artwork that tied the existence of the Backrooms into different historical periods and pop culture media, as well as Kane's interest in making a Portal movie in the future, I made these two infographics based on the Aperture Investment Opportunities videos back when Portal 2 first released. Hope you like it and maybe one day Kane might see it :P

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The Backrooms

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"Cave Johnson here. We pursuit science daily at our wonderful Enrichment Center, but to tell you the truth, we're running out of room, pretty damn quickly. Our drills are running into impenetrable bedrock layers when drilling further in the salt mines, and the government lackeys down at Lansing are not approving the, quote, 'potentially hazardous and environmentally devastating research expansion'. Pah. But we found something better. Gentlemen, I give you: the Backrooms!

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Test subject leaned on the wall and just 'clipped' through, scared Greg shitless. Heh. Do we know how the hell did this yellow, damp hellscape showed up? No. Do we care? Absolutely not. Infinite hallways, infinite room for new test chambers, and the building codes can go suck it because this place doesn't abide by Euclidean geometry, so technically they aren't even enforceable! We get free furniture here and there too so just deal with the minor problem of bottomless pits. Toss a carpet over it or something. Cave Johnson, we're done here."

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The Poolrooms

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"Cave Johnson here. Fact: Our robots build up to 30 test chambers a day. Another fact: We are somehow filling up the infinite void in our basement. I mean, there's still room, but the lab boys are saying a lot of it is 'structurally unstable'. You know what's also unstable? Your damn employment. Shut up.

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Anyway, one thing we have plenty of is those new robot test subjects. I had some of my guys send some of them off on 'one-way tests', if you get what I mean, and we've found something just peachy. You know the solution to running out of infinite space? That's right, more infinite space. Allow me to introduce: The Poolrooms!

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This place has got more swimming pools than the damn Florida coastline has ocean, and you might as well be IN Florida because there's sunlight down here! Or at least what our lawyers is saying legally counts as sunlight, so our workers can be spared the hour-long surface breaks to just sunbathe here instead 4 kilometers underground! Anyway, you may be saying, "Cave, last I checked your test chamber floors aren't made of water" and you'd be WRONG, because we let toxic goo flood the chambers here anyway, because it's funny! And science. Of course. Anyway, slap a platform here, some panels there, a button on that floating rock, and you have a new test chamber! We are running into a little more of a government problem right now though - evidently Michigan is pissed that we're hiding something from them so they called Washington, and for that we're gonna need to keep things off the books for this one, so make those cheques out to cash. Cave Johnson, we're done here!"

Cave Johnson here. Fact: Our robots build up to 30 test chambers a day. Another fact: We are somehow filling up the infinite void in our basement. Solution? More infinite void! I had my boys run some one-way tests further into the Backrooms and guess what, there's more of it! Gentlemen, I give you - the Poolrooms!

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Now you may be saying "Cave, last I checked your test chamber floors aren't made of water" and you'd be WRONG, because we let toxic goo flood the chambers here and there just for fun! And more science, of course. Meaning we can just slap a bunch of platforms onto the walls and we can get right back to work faster than you can fly down to Miami and get a pina colada! Speaking of Miami, it'll feel like you're there with the weird sunlight down here - you don't even need to take a ride to the surface! Now, admittedly, somehow the State Government found out about our last little expansion so we gotta keep this one off the books, so make those cheques out to cash. Cave Johnson, we're done here!

Cave Johnson here. Running into impenetrable bedrock layers when drilling further in your salt mines? Are the government lackeys down at Lansing not approving your potentially hazardous and environmentally devastating research expansions? Who cares, infinite space! Allow me to introduce: the Backrooms!

Infinite hallways, infinite room for new test chambers. Do we know how the hell did this yellow, damp hellscape showed up? No. Do we care? Absolutely not. We get free furniture here and there too so just deal with the minor problem of bottomless pits, heh. Cave Johnson, we're done here.

It's like describing chess to someone who's never seen chess before, and asking them to draw it.

Went to Hebden Bridge last week just to see the locations from H&S UK! I really have to say that that hiding spot was no joke - the map graphics did NOT do it justice. It was so far uphill and so steep that I felt like I was gonna pass out by the time I saw the bench!

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Anyway I got a 6-rock cairn so do I win

I didn't know Sam and Michael went to Dublin during rail rush!

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