Posting Hole

empty kpop sets make for insane liminal spaces

so every morning I head over to r/liminalspace and pick my new Zoom background for the day. this serves as a nice mini-ritual to start work and makes meetings ever so slightly more fun. I've been doing this, although not always with that subreddit, for something like 5 and a half years at this point. that is a lot of "liminal spaces" i've exposed myself to.

there is much argument over what is and isn't a liminal space, but since I just find it really funny that people experience spiritual levels of emotion to a picture of an empty hotel lobby with the elevator open, I'm don't really sweat the details. I think as long as you get the sense that you're alone, and either moving from point A to point B or taking a pit stop somewhere uselessly detached from society, that's a liminal space.

all of which leads me to a brilliant brainstorm I had in the middle of the night in 2021, when I was re-watching Pristin V's Get It (as you do) and there was this second-long shot of an empty room with a nonsense hexagonal couch, fluorescent lighting, and a bunch of mirrors going nowhere. that's when I realized that in the quest for hyper-stimulating visuals, kpop music videos end up churning out insane liminal spaces as set pieces. normally you don't pick up on it because someone is almost always there on the set, interrupting the liminality, but I cracked the code.

so I made a tweet with that shot, another shot from the same MV, and a couple more I had remembered or thought I remembered from other MVs. I had a followup ready to go in the afternoon to get more eyeballs on it because I thought it was really good. and then, I kept going. it was now just the secondary game I play of "find the liminal spaces" whenever I watch music videos or their behinds. appending to the thread every two weeks or so, I've now hit about 300 kpop liminal spaces.

with Twitter dead, I've decided to keep the thread going on Bluesky, but I also collected the whole thing in this imgur gallery that hopefully I'll remember to keep updated. these images are pokecapn-approved for your own Zoom backgrounds, or for any time you need to zone out and drift between realities:

kpop liminal spaces