Starting Sidemen Fanbase Synthesis
- Mark Wang
- Nov 2, 2025
- 3 min read
So what are the goals of the Sidemen community, or the Sidemen fanbase? Well, I think that some of the sort of hidden goals of the Sidemen community is to provide feedback in order to improve the content that the Sidemen produce, so they can enjoy their videos even more, and also to discuss amongst themselves to learn more, and to look at and buildup their own opinions on certain topics that are related to the Sidemen.
Providing Feedback
One of the most common type of posts that you will see on any forum or platform where Sidemen community members discuss, is posts that provide critique. Essentially, something along the lines of "I liked or enjoyed this, but at the same time, I think that this other thing could have been changed to make the whole video even better." An example from the comment section of the Sidemen's latest video, "20 Women vs. 1 Sidemen: Zach Justice Edition," is "Each to their own but majority would agree that the 20v1 videos aren’t that great barring a few, the more simple videos or even just the boys being together like the camping on the raft video and stuff like that are much better imo" (@heisenberg5867, 2025). Here, you can see that this viewer says that the latest video wasn't quite to their taste, even going as far as to summarize some other comments and the general feeling of the Sidemen fans to say so. This is useful feedback, literally telling the Sidemen what the fans want to see and what they want to watch, helping the Sidemen design better content, and the fans then get to enjoy that better content. To further prove this an academic paper written by Byun, U., Jang, M., & Baek, H. (2023), titled, "The effect of YouTube comment interaction on video engagement: focusing on interactivity centralization and creators' interactivity", talks about user engagement and how it can affect the overall community, as well as the quality or the topics of the content that the creator produces. To summarize their section about user engagement, they claim that the viewers and the creators share a connection through the videos that are produced and watched on YouTube, and that the "likes" or comments on a video are useful performance indicators. Then, using these performance indicators, "Many YouTube creators seek to gain popularity by satisfying user demands or needs to elicit positive response." Basically saying that creators listen to feedback, and then tailor or edit their content to match that feedback, so that their content is more enjoyable, becomes more popular, and then can be monetized.
Discussing/Debating Amongst Themselves
Another very common type of post is fans discussing or arguing over certain topics, ranging from particular aspects of certain videos, to entire videos or series', and even to each individual Sidemen's performance within a video. In this case, some fan's make an initial claim in a post, and then via replies to that post, other fans may agree or disagree with their claim and provide their own reasonings. For example, on Reddit's "r/Sidemen," user @Trophiezz says, "Unpopular opinion...out of the last few [20 vs 1s] this was one of the better." This user expresses their opinion so that they can receive recognition for their argument and to just get it off of their chest. After they posted that, several people replied, including user @John_Smith_DC, who agreed and provided their reasoning, saying, "I thought he was the perfect guest to do this format, he elevated the whole video." This is a perfect example of multiple fans discussing their viewpoints, which helps to support their side of the story, and it also allows people to reveal what they think, which can help them or others learn more about the topic. Maybe there was a few words that they missed in the video that changed the context of a segment, or a different interpretation of a joke, but all of that can usually be found in the forums. In an article by Iris Tabak and Ilana Dubovi, they claim that through discourse, knowledge sharing can occur. In fact, "Social media...may promote the transition between knowledge sharing to co-construction and informal learning, since they enable users to discuss the shared content." Normally, this apply to more academic oriented social media, but I think that this still applies to entertainment oriented content, because understanding of the content, like a joke or pun, can lead to enhanced enjoyment.
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