 This episode of Object Class Explained is made in partnership with SCP Declassified. To check out any of their other declassifications, go to the SCP Declassified subreddit. Links will be in the description below. Part 1. Some Assembly Required Everything at Ikea is being driven by function and purpose. For us, it's about directing customers and providing easy access to and from the store. Ikea spokesman Joseph Roth. When I was six years old, my mother and I went shopping at Walmart. I was following pretty closely behind when I saw a bunch of bags of marbles hanging off of a shelf. I went over to it and I pulled it down and when I looked back to where my mother was before, she wasn't there anymore. Now, for six-year-old me, the fact that she was probably around the corner didn't really click. And the whole world had just dropped out from underneath me. I went around the corner and she wasn't actually there. I went to the next aisle and she wasn't there either. And at this point, I panicked and I gave serious thought to the idea that she just left me there. And honestly, it took her a while to even notice that I was gone and during that time, even though nothing had changed, that store became a terrifying, confusing, and monstrous place. SCP-3008 taps into that exact feeling and asks, What if you were lost in an Ikea? Now, the object itself is just a store in a retail park in the middle of nowhere. The foundation bought the land in the building and is cordoned off the place. They've set up a site in the area and used that to operate out of for containment purposes. The description indicates that this building is some sort of a portal to an extra and possibly interdimensional Ikea. The inside resembles an Ikea and goes on for what seems like an infinite distance and there are employees inside or at least some semblance of employees. They have no identifying features except they all wear Ikea uniforms. And they are not exactly helpful. Perhaps the most interesting thing is not just that there are people living inside, but whole communities of people trapped in an Ikea. And that, perhaps above all else, is the driving theme of the piece. Part two, bringing the room together. The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers. Sam Walton. See, the thing about any big box retail store Ikea included is that at its core, it's about providing a product to a customer. It isn't about building a community. In fact, a lot of big box retail stores are notorious for destroying small communities through out-competing the small businesses there. Inside 3008 are a number of human communities comprised of people from all walks of life and what seem like alternate dimensions. And they have one goal really, survive. And in order to do that, they build villages of a sort and some of them are quite large and well defended. They're named after the signs above the place where they choose to settle. So there are places like Exchanges or Isle 11. Ikea is really an ideal choice for this SAP for a variety of reasons, beyond the fact that the place is primarily known for furniture. It also has a whole division of the company devoted to in-store restaurants, which provides denizens of 3008 food and drink. And the place is also notoriously confusing and sometimes difficult to navigate, even when it's not anomalous. But if you were wanting to live in a store, you can find a much better place than in Ikea. It's got beds, it's got chairs, it's got food. And it's got fleshy zombie staff members that want to kill you. All right, so the last thing is sort of a pain, but the rest is pretty good. And it's important to think about them, though, when considering the article outside of the primary through thread of building communities. There's a sprinkling of horror throughout that is primarily communicated to the reader through the faceless and monstrous staff that seem to want people to leave the store. I should know that that motivation is generally undone by the introduction to the journal entries that really go into detail about them. Because one of them chases a fellow out of the store and then kills him outside. So it's not like they're really trying to get people to leave the store. And I only say that so you don't bother trying to look for any deeper meaning with the monsters. They're not mysterious or unknowable. They're simply killing machines in the shape of a person and nothing can satiate them. Of course, there are things that can make them more angry. People being in the store after dark or a dead staff member will attract more and more. This makes it very hard for good defenses of those communities to actually work. I mean, sure, the store is safe to explore in Rome during the day, but if your village gets attacked overnight, you'd better get the bodies away from your walls or you'll be facing twice as many tomorrow. But even though the monsters inside the store aren't themselves, all that mysterious or interesting, there are still subtle things going on in this article that I'm going to have to cover. Part three, the journal. We had to haul the bodies away in the morning. Apparently the dead ones will attract more during the night. So we had to get them away from exchange. We have a couple of those trolley things they used to move big boxes around, so we loaded them up and we took them over to pick up. Apparently people just name everything in here after whatever sign is hanging overhead. A journal entry from SCP-3008. So there's essentially three different levels to SCP-3008 as described in the article. One is just the surface level. It really doesn't tell you much except that this is a labritheme Ikea that goes on forever. The real meat of the article is in the journal at the end that describes all of the finer details of the object itself. It's how we know as much as we do about the day-to-day life of the object's residents. But beyond the journal that the Foundation recovered, there is a third level of the story that you can only pick up through context and reading between the lines. And that's pretty much exactly what this kind of a video is supposed to be about. So the idea that this is interdimensional doesn't really pop up anywhere too explicit. There's a single journal entry that really dives into the concept. Our hero is talking about how some of the people inside don't know what the Statue of Liberty is, or have never heard of the International Space Station, and others don't seem to know who the Prime Minister is. And the greater context of that statement, by the by, is that it's entirely possible that the writer who we've been following through those journals the entire time is not from our dimension either. It's a very conspicuous black box in this section of the journal covering up who the writer thinks is Prime Minister. That's likely there because the article's writer, as opposed to the character writing the journal, wanted to hint at exactly that without being too explicit about it. Of course, when you give it any real thought, the only reason the Foundation would censor that name is in this exact scenario, so it's actually a pretty explicit clue to the reader. Now beyond that, remember how we talked about how the primary threat of this is building communities? Well, these are still humans, and there's a final subtle jab at how even in a place where it seems like people are working together for the common good, there's still bad people doing bad things. I mentioned that the monsters are attracted to bodies for a reason, and at the end of the journal, there's escalating attacks on the village that the writer is holed up in, and no one knows why, until it's too late. Someone has slipped a chunk of one of the monsters into some of the supplies they traded for a while back. So someone deliberately doomed their successful community. Why? Well, never know. Because the whole thing falls apart soon after and our journal writer manages to escape in a stroke of luck. I mean, sort of. He actually dies afterwards, so maybe not luck, but he does do the one thing he's been trying to do the entire journals and escapes. Anyway, that's it. If you enjoyed it, please hit the subscribe button. If you want updates when I upload, hit the notification bell or follow me on Twitter at D. Sumerian. And if you want to continue to support great content like this, head on over to patreon.com forward slash D. Sumerian. 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