Inside Voice - Real Life

This places an onus on domestic work to be more than just a means of replenishing oneself; it also becomes a mode of self-therapy. “Home as feeling” becomes a technology of self-optimization rather than a respite. Where you actually live is no excuse not to make good vibes, for vibes will help you deal with both personal and collective precarity.

Utterly entrancing at times, home vlogs revel in not just indoor activities but in the senses of comfort, coziness, and even beauty that the ideal home and its rituals bring. Not concerned with architecture or property values, they instead fixate on what happens inside, on objects and practices that generate moods, vibes, feelings.

Reconceptualized in this way, “home” is untethered from land, family, and lineage. It is siphoned off from the liberal fetish of homeownership — that quintessential image, derived from a short-lived American postwar prosperity, of a picket-fenced house with parents, kids, car, dog. Of course, the feeling of home is not a substitute for actual shelt... See more