For the last ten years or so, photos of so-called liminal spaces have permeated various corners of the internet. These are essentially pictures of empty rooms: often night photos of areas crowded during the daytime. The idea is to evoke a haunting, uncanny aura. There are many accounts on social media sites dedicated to showcasing these images. One such account is dollworld337. At first glance, the bland McMansion interiors, vacant swimming pools, and the like on dollworld337's Instagram page are typical of liminal content online. But on closer inspection, 337's collection of low-resolution photos reveals something more sinister.
We conducted a brief interrogation with dollworld337 to find out more. 337 was reticent to disclose her sources at first. However, she admits that she gleans these photos from eBay, Zillow, Craiglist, and Facebook Marketplace.
The only clearly-defined criteria for selecting the images is lighting. Night photos with the flash on are best. High-flash photography imbues pictures with a raw quality, according to 337.
Beyond lighting, how does 337 select the images she posts? In her words, she chooses images that activate her. Significantly, 337 borrows this term from the lexicon of MK-Ultra programming. To activate the subject is to expose them to phrases or images to trigger the action needed to complete their mission. One of the darker theories surrounding MK-Ulta is that the CIA has programmed victims for sexual purposes. This subject is worth an entire other deep dive and probably beyond the scope of this publication. In any case, dollworld337's invocation of this term is part of what makes her collection so unsettling.
What does "activation" mean for 337 specifically? "I never knew and still don't know how to explain it," she says. She describes it as something like fascination, disturbance, obsession, and satisfaction all rolled into one."If you know, you know."
