F74 / Floor 74 Trend

Submission 8,022

Part of a series on Internet Challenges. [View Related Entries]

About

F74 or the Floor 74 Challenge is a paranormal internet challenge where a participant writes "F74" on their wrist before they go to bed. Once they fall asleep, the participant will supposedly be taken to "floor 74," another dimension, consisting of a hallway with many numbered doors and something following them. The participant must find the blank door and enter it within 10 hours or get stuck on floor 74 forever. They also must not look back at whatever is following them, otherwise, it will capture them and take them to the "white room." The game was first shared online in May 2022, spreading over the course of the year on TikTok.

Origin

On May 20th, 2022, TikToker^[1]^[2] @floor74info posted two videos sharing the rules of the F74 or Floor 74 challenge, garnering over 4.3 million views and 500,000 views respectively in five months (shown below, left and right). The videos explain how you can travel to "floor 74," a red hallway with many numbered doors, if you write "F74" on your wrist in red pen before falling asleep. The dreamer must find a blank door to escape and must not look back at a mysterious creature following them, otherwise they're taken to the "white room," which is said to be almost inescapable.

The same day, the game was defined on Urban Dictionary^[3]:

Floor 74 is a challenge or game where you write F74 on your wrist and go to bed.

In your dream you will wake up in a red hallway with lots of doors with numbers on them, the objective of the game is to find the door without a number on it in under 10 hours to escape.

There is also normally someone following you and if you look behind you or let them catch up to you they will capture you and take you to the white room which is a room with nothing in it.

You can get out of the white room by banging on the walls hard enough that you wake up but it is very hard to escape the white room once you enter.

If it takes you more than 10 hours to find the door, you will be stuck in your dream forever.

The next day, the same TikToker posted several more videos about the challenge, including videos explaining what the white room is and strategies for getting out of floor 74 (examples shown below).

Spread

On May 20th, 2022, TikToker^[4] @goingtofloor74 posted a video where they say they're going to take the challenge. In the video, they present three potential profile pictures on screen: one meaning the user is still asleep, one meaning they made it out of floor 74 and one claiming it didn't work and they're awake. After 10 hours, the profile picture remained at the profile picture meaning they're still asleep. The profile picture is still set to this and the user has not uploaded again. The video (shown below) garnered over 1.9 million views in five months.

The trend experienced a boost in interest on TikTok^[5]^[6] in October as people posted similar videos, offering profile pictures sharing the status of their supposed journey to floor 74 (examples from October 2022 shown below). On October 10th, HITC^[7] published an article on the trend. On October 11th, Dexerto^[8] published an article on the trend. On the same day, YouTubers^[9] Built By Gamers posted a video about the challenge, garnering over 180,000 views in a day.