Kane Parsons
This celebrity goo was created by Scott Hardie.
publication date: Sunday, May 24, 2026 (part of May 2026)
category: 
Fads
clue: If you think it's insane that a creepy 4chan post led to this 20-year-old directing two Oscar nominees and an Emmy winner in a widely released horror film, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a short story essentially agreeing.
explanation: In 2019, 13-year-old Parsons started a "creepypasta" thread on 4chan with a photo of a seemingly self-contained series of rooms with yellow wallpaper and yellow carpet, asking fellow users to reply with their own photos of spaces that they found quietly disturbing. His image, which came to be called "The Backrooms," inspired a wave of imitators, some adhering to the same yellow aesthetic while others diverged. In 2022, Parsons used software to animate a series of short films building upon the original photo. The "backrooms" concept caught on in pop culture, partially inspiring the TV series Severance and the third season of American Horror Stories. In 2026, Parson directed the feature film The Backrooms based on the idea, starring Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, and Emmy winner Mark Duplass. The clue references author and early feminist Gilman, whose notable 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper was a fictionalized depiction of her "rest cure" for postpartum depression, in which her narrator describes a descent into madness while locked in a featureless yellow room by her husband for months. more…
intended difficulty: easy
solved by: Russ Wilhelm and Richard Slominsky
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