Sandpaper Floor Room
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About
Sandpaper Floor Room is a hypothetical torture device first described by the Daily Dirt blog in 2004 and popularized by a 4chan post in 2014. The device is a locked room with a rough grit sandpaper conveyor belt floor that moves in one direction at a very slow but constant speed. The naked victim, trapped in the room, is forced to walk constantly to avoid being scraped until they collapse from exhaustion. Starting in 2021, the post has been the subject of memes and humorous references.
Origin
On January 8th, 2004, the Daily Dirt[1] blog published a top 10 list for worst ways to die. Ranked one on the list was "The Sandpaper Room," a hypothetical torture device that consists of a locked room with an abrasive floor that moves at a constant speed of two or three miles per hour. The victim, trapped in the room, is forced to constantly walk to avoid being sanded away until they collapse from exhaustion, at which point the pain from scraping will likely force them to move again. Eventually, the victim, no longer able to get up, bleeds to death (original post shown below).
Spread
On April 10th, 2006, Yahoo Answers[2] user OneRunningMan cited the blog post in his reply to the question, "What's the worst way to die?"
On February 6th, 2014, an anonymous 4chan user then posted a PNG drawing of the sandpaper floor room in a /b/ thread, describing the design (original post no longer available, screenshot shown below). On May 26th, 2014, Redditor WinWing posted a screenshot of the post to the /r/4chan[3] subreddit, where it garnered over 500 upvotes in nine years.
The post first saw use as a meme reference in 2021. For example, on March 14th, 2021, iFunny[5] user TurboGuy4k posted a Wow This Is Your Room? meme that received 340 smiles in two years (shown below, left).
On March 13th, 2023, an anonymous 4chan user posted the image of the Sandpaper Floor Room in a /tv/ thread, with another user replying[6] with a still image from the "Virtual Insanity" music video, in which a visual effect of a moving floor is used. Later that day, the Twitter[7] account @greentexts_bot posted a screenshot of the exchange, which gained over 660 retweets and 8,300 likes in two months (shown below, right).
In April and May 2023, the concept saw viral spread on Twitter and other social media websites through reposts and memes.
Various Examples
Template
Search Interest
External References
[1] Daily Dirt – 2003: THE YEAR IN DIRT, PART 2
[2] Internet Archive – What's the worst way to die?
[3] Reddit – /b/ has a torture idea
[5] iFunny – TurboGuy4k
[6] 4plebs – /tv/ Post #181695569
[7] Twitter – @greentexts_bot
Top Comments
rerere284
May 27, 2023 at 02:13AM EDT in reply to
Timey16
May 27, 2023 at 04:52AM EDT in reply to