Name: The Red Room.
Age: It’s from the programme Stranger Things, so probably about 35.
Appearance: A darkroom.
But it’s just a red room, isn’t it? That guy keeps being all like: “Get out of my special red room.” Trust me, it’s a darkroom.
It’s more red than dark, though ... Look, I saw Stranger Things, too, and I know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s a darkroom.
I’ll meet you in the middle – it’s quite a dark red. No, it’s a photographic darkroom. That’s the thing that it is. I know what it is.
Then you’re the only one. What?
Nobody else knows what it is. “He puts the photo in water and this somehow makes it more clear?” a viewer asked on the Q&A website Stack Exchange, causing some consternation online. Oh god.
Pardon? I mean, this is the whole problem with the world today, isn’t it? Nobody understands process any more. You have a magic computer in your pocket and it means you’ll never know the glory of tangible, real-world process. You don’t know how to typeset. You don’t know how to boot a floppy disk. And, clearly, you have no idea how to develop photographic film.
OK, so explain it to me. It’s a darkroom. The Stranger Things character Jonathan takes photos on his camera, then goes into a special dark room to develop them. It has to be dark, because too much light will destroy the negatives.
And how do you turn negatives into photographs? That’s easy. You take the film and soak it in chemicals, then you hang it up for a few days.
And then what? And then you put a bigger piece of paper in the water, and get a little telescope out, and then … oh fine, look, I don’t know.
I knew it! Yes, but I do still know what a darkroom is. I’m not an imbecile.
Are you age-shaming me? No, but this never happened in my day. When I watched someone on TV using a quill, I didn’t go on the internet and write: “What is the purpose of the information feather?”
Only because the internet didn’t exist then. Exactly. I did things the old-fashioned way instead, by seeking out a librarian and verbally asking her what the purpose of the information feather was.
And? It turns out that a quill is a direct precursor to the modern pen.
What’s a pen? Stop it.
Do say: “I’ve never felt so old.”
Don’t say: “Will their kids have heard of newspapers?”
