A hilarious question about a photography darkroom on ‘Stranger Things’ is going viral: ‘What is the purpose of this ‘red room’?’ (NFLX)

Netflix

The latest season of "Stranger Things" debuted on Netflix on July 4, and fans are loving it.
In the third season, two of the show’s characters work at a local newspaper. Given the ’80s setting, that newspaper uses a photography darkroom to develop its photos.
But viewers in 2019 who grew up with smartphones and the internet aren’t necessarily aware of what a darkroom is, which resulted in a hilarious — and now viral — question.
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The third season of "Stranger Things" is a delightful re-creation of 1980s smalltown America that’s long gone, right down to the Waldenbooks and Sam Goody in the local mall.

It was a time before smartphones and the internet, before memes and the retail apocalypse. It was a time when photographs still had to be developed by hand in a "darkroom," just like one of the show’s main characters has to do repeatedly while working for a local newspaper.

Netflix

But let’s say you grew up in a world where photography was all handled by a magical supercomputer in your pocket — you might not know what "the purpose of this ‘red room’ is.

That’s exactly what happened with one user posting to the online forum StackExchange in a question that’s since gone viral on social media:

Netflix/StackExchange

The "red room," of course, is a darkroom used for developing photos.

But the idea of a "Stranger Things" viewer outright not knowing what such a room is and what it’s used for has made some folks feel absurdly old.

Thankfully, folks in the StackExchange forum generously supplied a thorough answer to the use of a darkroom in photography, and why a red light would be used to illuminate such a room.

But just in case you’re wondering yourself: Before digital photography, images were developed by hand in chemical baths kept in "darkrooms." Light from the outside could potentially ruin any photos being developed, so a red light (which doesn’t interfere with photo development) is often used.

And for the millions of you who grew up with darkrooms and manually developed photos: Yep, this is where we’re at. Just wait until they start asking about cassettes!

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