Escaping the Backrooms: The Business Need of Sensitivity Maps

Mind in Action Newsletter - By Caroline Bond @linkedin.com/in/bondbyart

You know you’ve done a great job raising a human being when you find yourself brainstorming with your 16-year-old son about THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS. For a school assignment, he chose the word ANEMOIA — nostalgia for a time you never lived. That alone already carries so much poetic weight, but the conversation didn’t stop there.

He went on to explain Liminal Spaces, the internet myth of the Backrooms, the dreamy distortions of Dreamcore, and the strange unease of the Uncanny.

And believe it, we spent hours making connections about these. As we talked, something clicked for me.

These concepts are not just teenage curiosities or internet aesthetics. They are powerful metaphors for how we live, work, and build systems today — and they tie directly to ART, Strategy, and Sensitivity.

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Have you ever heard of the Backrooms?

It’s an internet-born myth: an endless maze of yellow, humming corridors — no windows, no exit, no end. You scroll, you walk, you loop. Fo-re-ver.

This is a backroom

Strangely, this resonates with how many people describe their jobs today. The Backrooms of work are endless spreadsheets, KPI tunnels, Zoom corridors, optimization loops. Always moving, never arriving. But wait.

Here’s the thing...

Systems that trap us like this are not lifeless. As living organisms they can collapse from inside, not because of lack of efficiency, but because of lack of meaning. Lack of a ´north` - a direction.

Ok. So, How do these concepts tie into art, strategy & sensitivity?

The dictionary of obscure sorrows reminds us that language can name the unnamable.

Businesses often miss the invisible emotional landscapes that people actually live in. That is where art and sensitivity come in: to give form and vocabulary to what metrics cannot capture.

Anemoia is one of the words found in the Dictionary of Obscrure Sorrows.

When I make the intersection to Art, Strategy and Sensitivity, here is what I get from this brainstorm:

(nostalgia for a time you never lived) - Connects to branding, culture, and even cities. Organizations are constantly selling nostalgia for futures that never existed. This is both powerful and dangerous — art can expose it, reframe it, and help organizations design futures instead of trapping people in fake pasts.

Now let´s talk about Liminal Spaces. Come with me.

In strategy, these are the in-between zones: a company caught between old and new models, a society suspended between capitalism and something-not-yet-defined, a team hovering between burnout and reinvention. Artists thrive here. Sensitivity Officers could help companies resist the urge to “fill the silence,” instead holding the discomfort long enough for regeneration to emerge.

It’s the same practice we share in our closest relationships — with a best friend, a family member, a spouse, a son or daughter. Silence, when honored, is not emptiness. It’s presence. It’s power.

What about the Backrooms?

The creepy infinite office loops resonate directly with corporate life. The endless beige corridors, buzzing lights, meaningless repetition — they’re metaphors for organizations that optimize until they strip meaning away. Artivism can interrupt this loop. The Chief Sensitivity Officer role exists to prevent companies from becoming backrooms — soulless, endless, disconnected spaces.

The Dreamcore

That surreal, otherworldly aesthetic where familiar places feel strange and unreal. It mirrors how corporate culture often dreams of innovation but wakes up in the same old structures. ARTISTS CAN TURN DREAMCORE INTO A TOOL — transforming corporate daydreams into prototypes for possible futures.

The Uncanniness in Business

Freud described it as the unsettling mix of familiar and strange. In business, this appears when organizations adopt “human” language (community, empathy, belonging) but operate with inhuman systems. Sensitivity roles exist to close this gap — ensuring culture feels authentic, not uncanny.

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Liminal Spaces, Dungeons & Dragons?, and the Art of Navigation?

Yes, it sounds unusual. But this is just my creative MIND IN ACTION here. While I was shaping this article I had another insight: this all connects to the D&D story somehow.

Players face the same challenge we do, wandering through liminal dungeons, no clear path, only imagination and collaboration to guide the way.

You don’t survive with brute force alone. You survive because someone holds the sensitivity map, weaving story and meaning so the party doesn’t get lost.

That’s exactly what’s missing in business. We’ve built systems optimized for control — but not for navigation.

Is there any way out?

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Artists as Exits

Think of a maze. Walls that repeat, corridors that look the same, the sense you’re moving but going nowhere. Familiar? That’s what many organizations feel like today.

Artists don’t just mirror that maze — they sketch doors where none existed. They reimagine exits. They hold silence long enough for new maps to emerge. They transform fragments into coherence and seed new myths to follow.

So the next time your strategy feels like an endless beige corridor, or a terrifying maze, ask yourself:

• Who in this room is mapping the unseen?

• Who is bold enough to imagine the exits?

Because if the answer is “no one,” then your business is already living in its own Backrooms.

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Time has come to invent roles that honor sensitivity as strategy.

Mine is Chief Sensitivity Officer and yours? What about:

• Head of Insight & Impact?

• Narrative Systems Architect?

• Director of Strategic Imagination ?

Let’s not keep walking in circles. Let’s play a new campaign: regenerate the systems from within. I am open to remote opportunities ready to bring my sensitivity and strategic imagination to organizations willing to feel beyond the usual.

Let´s bond :)

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If you came all this way ( thank U <3), here are the links my son shared with me which led me to the insights for this article. I´ll certainly use them again.

Thanks "fifo" ( that´s the way I call him <3 ).

Nice insights for u all :)

• The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

• The Art of The In-Between: An Analysis of Liminal Spaces - https://youtu.be/olsXUqKTWgI?si=7ykh4Yu86Z1pw_Sb

• Places you've seen in your Dreams Explained - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAqSEv429c

• The Caretaker - Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stages 1-6 (Complete) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJWksPWDKOc