History

Where we try to document how we got here.

After being around for 23 years, #TheCabin has seen many evolutions, people, web sites, technologies and even a name change.

#TheCabin originally began in 1995 as #TeenCabin. As with many chat rooms at that time, they were age-focused, and many were prefixed with “teen” to be explicit about the audience.

The late 90s had the first edition of LaZeR Day, an annual holiday for Cabiners to celebrate the community and the people. There have been many LaZeR Day events over the years, like a live concert, and both in person and virtual parties. Cabiners old and new come by every year and it’s a special time.

In 2000 #TeenCabin found one of it’s members no longer a teenager and a name change took place. A new chapter began, where age restrictions were lifted.

In the early 2000s #TheCabin splintered to occupy two IRC Networks, the existing EFnet and a new network created specifically for #TheCabin called CabiNet. CabiNet had three servers and was connected to the people on EFnet through a bot that would relay the conversations between networks. This configuration lasted approximately a year before #TheCabin again consolidated to EFnet only.

In January 2005 #TheCabin launched “r33tcast”, a podcast. It was (and still is as far as we know) the only podcast that was fully interactive via text to speech. It worked by a single live host speaking into the microphone and the rest of #TheCabin listening along. They would respond not by voice, but by typing. Their text would then get converted into speech through custom r33tcast software and it would get recorded along with the live host. This podcast was ranked highly in the early days of podcasts, but most people found the content having too much “shock value”. In the span of the r33tcast it had two different live hosts and lasted 20 episodes.