“There’s quite a few streamers on twitch, but I’m not sure how many of them are giving you this.” Starting in a forum discussion on the rights of individuals to be forgotten online, Jacob Sacher is narrating his channel’s latest Wikipedia rabbit-hole, as they discover the origins of the Furry movement.
HailfromthePale started following the cancellation of the 2020 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and a postponed trip for Jacob Sacher to train under master-clown Philippe Gaullier in Paris. On the channel Jacob draws comics, workshops stand-up, or just browses Wikipedia, all in pursuit of comedy. The variety of content has been seen as innovative by some, but Jacob doesn’t easily agree.
“I don’t think I’m a revolutionary-crazy guy for wanting to run through a PowerPoint on-stream. There’s so much room for innovation that I think other people will start doing comedy, and really truly innovate it. Twitch want to broaden away from games, so now you can stream ‘Food and Drink’ if you want to cook something, or ‘Music’ if you want to play music, or if you want to talk, you can stream 'Just chatting’. But currently, there’s no option for just ‘Comedy’ – the genre literally does not exist, in terms of classifying it."
Having trained with UCB and Improv Olmypic, and been a house performer for both of Melbourne’s longform improv theatres, what does Jacob think improvisers bring to Twitch?
“Twitch is interactive, so a good stream has to be a conversation between two people: the streamer, and the chat. So I definitely think it's improvised, in that you need to – for lack of a better term – “yes, and” the chat. You say "yes" to the chat, and go with them, and try not to take too much focus off you, and try not take too much focus off them.”
“But if you look at some streams, often it's just a bunch of people simping to the streamer, and you’re not going to have that in any comedy show that I’ve ever seen in my life. The dynamic is just totally different. The power balance has shifted. The person who’s powerful is the streamer.”
When it comes to building his own community online, Jacob has developed more innovative methods.
“My favourite thing to happen on-stream has definitely been the introduction of “grill-cam”. In my culture, food is very important, and you’re not really friends with someone unless they’ve made you food. So now on the steam I’ve got grill-cam, which is a separate camera, just focussed on my grill, where you can see what I’m grilling that night.”
Jacob's swerve into talking about culture is expected for anyone who's sat down with him before, and HailfromthePale continues his passion. “I’m pretty unashamed about being Jewish on my stream, and that’s reflected in the name too. HailfromthePale is a reference to the Pale of Settlement. Nobody else is doing that: everyone else is too scared to be a Jew online”
When we talk about future plans for the channel, Jacob shares his ambition to move beyond being just a comedian. He wants to “take down the walls” of his comic-persona, and allow greater access to his real life. “Twitch is like a drive show, and instead of calling in, people are chatting in. The reason I’m on twitch now, is it allows me to do my two favourite things at once. It allows me to do comedy, but it also lets me build a community. And that’s very hard to do if you’re just being a comedian.”
