When dark tourism goes para-terrestrial : Online legend-tripping and touring the void

James, Sophie and Cronin, James (2026) When dark tourism goes para-terrestrial : Online legend-tripping and touring the void. Annals of Tourism Research, 118: 104172. ISSN 0160-7383

Text (When dark tourism goes para-terrestrial PDF)
When_dark_tourism_goes_para-terrestrial_PDF.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (458kB)

Abstract

Using Žižek's concept of ontological incompleteness, we theorise the touristic appeal of online legend-tripping as derived from the fantasy of traversing reality's uncharted horizons. While online legends such as ‘the Backrooms’ invoke curiosity in suffering and the macabre, they deviate from the sense of heritage, moral guardianship, and evidential integrity that characterise physical dark tourism. Drawing upon an observational netnography of the ‘r/backrooms’ community on Reddit, we unpack processes of temporal suspension, ‘good’ alienation, and transcendence downward which enable online legend-tripping to function as a ‘para-terrestrial’ variant of dark tourism. The importance of real-world referents recedes, giving way to subjective encounters with the unknown. Obscene enjoyment displaces moral engagement, and participatory mythmaking supplants the bureaucratisation and commoditisation of travel experiences.