The Sidemen Fandom as a Discourse Community
- Mark Wang
- Oct 2
- 3 min read
I have already done a deep dive into who the Sidemen are, and also a bit about their audience (please look at my past blog posts if you haven't already), so I will be focusing on how do the Sidemen and their fans qualify as a discourse community.
The Six Requirements for a Discourse Community
Common Public Goals
As a group of fans, the overall goals of the fandom is to simply have fun watching the Sidemen. They also provide necessary feedback to the Sidemen so that they can improve their Youtube content. Sometimes, fans can also discuss certain aspects of the latest videos, like what was their favorite or least favorite parts.
Communication Methods for Members
As a fandom that literally contains tens of millions of fans worldwide, there is no "one" communication method that they use. A vast majority of the member interaction, however, occurs online, through Youtube comments or Reddit or any other public forum websites.
Member Participation
As I mentioned above, there are many different ways that fans can talk with each other and with the Sidemen, although if you were to want to speak to one of the Sidemen, the best way is either in person or through Youtube comments. You can give feedback, which the Sidemen often listen to, or simply sing your praises.
Genres of the Group
The Sidemen are a Youtube group, who produce videos and other content for fans to watch and enjoy. Their utilize a variety of different styles in their videos, including online games that they play, to popular gameshows that they recreate, or fun vlogs. Originally, though, the Sidemen mostly focused on soccer (or football, as they call it) and "GTA V".
A Special/Unique Language
I just mentioned a good example of their kind of language; since they are English, they naturally use British English and British slang. They are also pretty experienced in the fields in which they create content, so there can be some level of technical terms, such as soccer rules, video game mechanics, or filming terms.
A Standard of Knowledge and Varying Levels of Knowledge
"OG" fans of the Sidemen, or long-term fans, know much more about the Sidemen than newer members who have just started to regularly watch their videos. This can include inside jokes that reference some long-ago video or event, or the Sidemen's background and relatively humble beginnings, a lot of which new members don't understand or don't realize.
See the Sidemen Fans Communicate
This is an article on the Sidemen. (You may have to scroll a bit to get to the discussion on the Sidemen audience). Essentially, they repeat a lot of what I have already mentioned, but it does offer an outside perspective, if you would like to read it. The article explains what the Sidemen audience is for newcomers or for people who may want to start watching the Sidemen. But, if you don't want to read what they have written, or what I have written, then you can go right to the source and look for yourself what the Sidemen audience is like. The best places, as I have previously mentioned are the Sidemen's Youtube comment section, or the Sidemen Reddit, but you can also look into Instagram, Facebook, and a bunch of other places online.
The Sidemen Fandom; What's Interesting?
For me, what could be interesting to look at, in terms of their language practices, is do the Sidemen fans emulate the Sidemen, using terms or slang that they would use, or not? For example, I might still call it soccer, but maybe some other American viewer has changed their style of speaking and they now call it football, because of having watched the Sidemen. I rarely read too deep into fan's feedback and discussions, so I would also like to get a better idea of what they really enjoy, and also what sort of demographics tend to enjoy the Sidemen the most.
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