Doors into "The Corner" March 2025

Even if you're not already in the lurk

Got reconnected with an old friend who’s a bit curious about what’s happened in my life over the last 7 years. Describing “the corner” isn’t easy, but I need to do it regularly. Doing this is iterative because, “the corner”, my view and usage of the corner, and the corner itself is always changing. So here goes…

Hospitality on YouTube?

Christian Baxter recently noted again that aspirationally at least there is a spirit of hospitality in the corner. The most recent “hot girl” of the corner is probably Ethan who came into my Friday livestream accidentally and then shared his story with Christian.

This is a great example of the “randos conversation” distributed. I stared doing them in 2018 and it has become a culture for the corner.

Time and Attention instead of Status

In “the real world” of social media people are valued by their status. They might be wealthy, famous, good looking, etc. but in an attention economy everybody knows you need to look for “a bigger name”. Climbing the ladder means finding people willing to “condescend” (that’s a theological term BTW) to give you a bit of time to pitch your book or something for you to get the bigger name on their channel to draw the attention and grab the clicks. As your follower or subscriber count goes up you can reach bigger and bigger names. That’s how the game is played.

While “the corner” is not a status free zone (never will be one of those among human beings) “value” is more often seen in some quotient of hospitality AND time/attention. You are valued in the corner to the degree that you are willing to play.

If you show up on livestream and you are willing to share something of your story, if you’re willing to “play” with others hospitably, you’ll probably make a friend. What the corner really is is a network of friendships and as people play together friendships grow. They can start online but in time people will want to broaden the friendships and that will involve offline too.

Where to Begin

Christian Baxter is a good place to begin. He’s one of the more recent channels but he’s been putting in the time and the effort. He even on his own dime traveled to Europe for the ARC Conference.

Christian doesn’t livestream much where he “drops the link” but if you show up in the corner chances are good you’ll get an invite from him to have a longer conversation with him which will give you a deeper introduction.

How Streamyard Livestreaming Began

Video and voice chats “in the corner” were originally birthed on the Bridges of Meaning Discord server. Most of you over the age of 30 don’t even know what that is so I’ll spare you. If you do know what they are and you want in I’ve been hard pressed recently to have Discord cough me up an invite link. I still do Q/A from posts there.

A while ago Jacob Faturechi pioneered using Streamyard to do live conversations directly to open YouTube for “the corner”. Jacob still regularly hosts his “Just Chatting” livestreams where you can click on a Streamyard link in the “live chat” on the side of the window (on a computer) or in the comments below (on a phone) to hop onto the conversation. That is the key to “coming out of the lurk”. No longer watching but participating.

Every channel that livestreams takes on the culture of the personality of their host. As with everyone if you get to know Jacob you’ll have a sense of how the conversation will go. Jacob gets the credit for starting this and he’s still very active.

Larger channels like Jacob’s tend to get busy with 4 to 8 people on at a time sometimes which can make it tougher to have more patient, in depth conversations. I’ll make a list below of some smaller channels that might be good places for beginners to get started.

The House of Woo

One of my favorite new channels that I think would be a good place for someone to start would be Mark D Parker’s “The House of Woo”. He and Ron Copperman regularly livestream and because the channel is smaller it’s easy to jump on and have a good conversation. Mark is a Christian because the Buddhists sent him back and Ron is a minister so their conversations will tend to be fairly Christian focused. They like miracle stories and fairly open metagelicals should feel at home quickly.

The best way to get notifications of a livestream in progress that you can jump into is to subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the “notification” button on your account. Mark livestreams fairly regularly, shares his contact information freely and is a good place to start.

Weekend Chill Streams with McMo

A relatively new channel where you can catch a livestream is with McMo who’s been around the corner for a while. Here again we have other former evangelical minister who likes talking to people. He often streams on Saturdays and Sundays for long stretches and again because the channel is small the conversation won’t get too crowded like they do on the larger channels, which will give people a chance to have a more expansive and wide-ranging conversation.

Chris Howard

Corner OG Michael Sartori recently brought to my attention that Chris Howards livestreams almost every day with not a lot of people knowing it. Again, this is a small channel but Chris is a good guy and if you’re looking for a conversation he’s available.

Larger, Older Channels

Chad the Girl-Dad often will livestream while he’s tiling. He’s a corner pillar in many ways but he tends to stream lately when he’s available rather than on a definite pattern. His Channel is called “Friday Morning Nameless”

Luke should be back After Lent

Another Corner Pillar/OG is Luke Thompson who has paused streaming for Lent. He often streams on weekday mornings which I assume will resume after the fast. His, unlike some of those listed above is one of the busier channels which means that the online conversation can be excited and more energetic but much tougher to get a word in edgewise. This is why I recommend many of the smaller channels above where you can actually take some time to get to know people.

Finding “The link”

Sometimes it’s hard to get onto the livestream even though Ethan Caughy did it accidentally. It can work on a phone or a computer. They key is hitting the link which then initiates Streamyard into setting up the connection.

Streaming veterans will usually pin the link the top of the livestream where it is permanently findable. Sometimes you have to ask them to “drop the link” to get onto join.

Concluding Thoughts

In this economy of time and attention “the corner” will be what you make of it.

For me it’s been a terrific space in which to try out ideas, make friends, have conversations and see what can fly in a wider world than just between my ears. As with many things, the more you pay (or put into it), the more it’s worth.