‘What Is the Purpose of This Red Room in Stranger Things?’ Gen Z Doesn’t Know What a Darkroom Is
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GENERATION Z has no idea what a darkroom is and were thusly confused by scenes in Stranger Things where Jonathan is processing his photographs.
It’s funny and sad and damn we feel old.
A young fan of the popular Netflix show Stranger Things earned a bit of Internet fame (or is it infamy?) this weekend when they asked a question about that strange “red room” in the show where Jonathan goes “to ‘refine’ his photos or something.” In other words: a darkroom.
The original question was posted to a StackExchange forum, where the confused fan described the darkroom in a post titled “What is the purpose of this ‘red room’ in Stranger Things?”
The initial responses were understanding, stepping in to explain that “that room is called a darkroom, and it’s part of the photographic printing process.” They explained that photos were processed in chemicals (the water he referenced), but that darkrooms had become somewhat rare in the digital age.
Of course, it didn’t take long before someone saw the post and shared it on Twitter alongside the caption “*crumbles further into dust*” to highlight just how old this question made them feel:
And thus, a meme was born. The screenshot quickly showed up on Imgur, Reddit’s /r/memes subreddit, and then got picked up by international news outlets. Meanwhile, responses to the Tweet above—which has been liked over 61K times and retweeted over 13K times—began pouring in:
Well you get the picture. Literally.
