Exploring the Sidemen YouTube Channel and Its Community
- Mark Wang
- Sep 4
- 3 min read
Introduction
The Sidemen are a group of 7 famous British Youtubers, each with their own personal Youtube channels and fans. But, as a collective, they are probably even more famous, and with a much bigger audience. They encourage as much community engagement as they can, whether it is a simple like or dislike on a Youtube video from their fans, to a short or long form comment in the Youtube comment section. They have said multiple times that they take feedback into account when producing content so that it is as enjoyable as possible for their audience. "The Youtube Algorithm," as it is nicknamed, also takes into account all kinds of video engagement and then recommends their content to other people on the Youtube platform who have not yet watched the Sidemen; another reason to seek community engagement. On top of that, the Sidemen have held many fan events, including meet-and-greets, videos that invited fans to participate in, and more. As of right now, the Sidemen channel has over 20 million subscribers, and likely close to 100 million in total across all of their various channels.
Content Variety and Innovation
The Sidemen produce a lot of different content, from longer 2 hour videos to short 10 minute videos. They are largely known for their comedic content, rather than their skill, although some of them are quite skilled in certain areas. On the "Sidemen" channel, their group's main channel, they post a more lengthy video every Sunday, which they call Sidemen Sunday's; these videos are a lot like reality TV, where they split up into groups and give themselves a challenge. Other videos that they do include Video Game content, where they will play a variety of games just for fun together, Podcasts, minigames, and so on.
The Sidemen Community
The Sidemen community and audience, are of course, largely online, with only special events being a way to interact with the individuals that make up the Sidemen in real life. The Sidemen are also a group of British content creators and celebrities, which means that a large percentage of their viewers come from England, with smaller percentages, but a good amount nonetheless, being from the Americas, the rest of Europe, Asia, and Oceania. As you can tell from where all their viewers are from, the Sidemen community is very diverse, with people from many places, ages, genders, and ethnicities across the world tuning in to watch their videos. The Sidemen are also very prevalent on other social media platforms, such as Reddit, X, and Instagram, all of which they use to promote their Youtube videos or to keep Sidemen fans up to date on the goings-on of their lives. I think that the reason why they have such a big audience with a ton of community engagement is because their content is personable, hilarious to the point of goofy, and they all get along with other people and are very nice and kind.
My Experience and Interactions with the Sidemen
I was originally introduced to the Sidemen because of my own love for video games like Minecraft and Call of Duty, and many members of the Sidemen would individually record and post videos of them playing these games. Once I was a fan of their individual content, it was a very short leap to become a fan of their group and the funny videos that they uploaded. While I do not personally like writing comments to their videos, mainly because of my fear of writing and having an audience, I will read others' comments to see what I missed, or to see what their reactions were, and I will occasionally put a "Like" on one of their videos that I really enjoyed. My favorite part about this community is that we can all laugh and joke together, most of the time about something funny, stupid, or entertaining, one of the Sidemen did in a video.
As we blog I hope to learn about how people, in what are essentially public forums but with a much more casual mood and flow, talk to each other and communicate.
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