How “Cabin Porn” Took Over the Internet
July 02, 2025 at 04:30PMIn this short read, which is part of Dwell’s 25th anniversary package, Stassa Edwards recalls the 2010s internet—when “nearly every popular niche Tumblr blog was turned into a book”—and how Zach Klein’s escapist photographs at Cabin Porn helped fuel an off-the-grid cabin and tiny house phenomenon. (I can attest that this is true: At the end of 2013, Cabin Porn and other feeds like it inspired me and my husband to donate all of our belongings, move to the country, and build a tiny house on wheels, which we lived in from 2015 to 2016.) Klein, previously a Dwell CEO, discusses this period, when he himself lived in a picturesque cabin in upstate New York, and why the fantasy of getting offline and living simply in the woods appeals to so many people.
The appeal of Cabin Porn might seem obvious at this moment—dreaming of simple living is ubiquitous. While social media has turned to an extremist embrace of tradwife influencers selling us a romanticized image of simple living, mainstream publications—this one included—peddle in cabin porn. Sleek photographs of cabins are less obviously politically charged than raw milk and the return of measles, but both share the same seductive appeal, the aesthetic of yearning: an escape from late capitalism’s ceaseless demands of labor and attention.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/07/02/cabin-porn-escapism-tumblr/
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