With YouTube growing every single day as a platform, more people are turning to the internet as a source of entertainment as opposed to television. Creators like Pewdiepie and the Paul brothers have swiftly become household names, but another Youtube group has been a strong contender for the top spot in recent years: the Sidemen.
A group of seven men, ranging from the ages of twenty-one to twenty-five, have made their mark on the UK YouTube scene. Their content ranges from gaming videos between members to soccer (or football) challenges to entertaining daily vlogs. Each member tends to focus on a different area of content to produce, and as such, the group has amassed a massive fanbase with its most subscribed to member being KSI with 18 million followers. The other six members are wroetoshaw (12 million subscribers), miniminter (7 million subscribers), Vikkstar123 (4 million subscribers), TBJZL (2 million subscribers), Zerkaa (2 million subscribers), and Behzinga (2 million subscribers).
Recently, the group has regained their popularity. With an upcoming boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul approaching at the summer's end, the seven men are in the spotlight, and they're using it to their advantage to make this season worthy of the title "Sidemen Summer."
For the past three years, the Sidemen have hosted an annual charity soccer (football) match, and on June 2nd, they continued the tradition, playing against a team of other YouTube creators that ended in a 7-1 victory to the Sidemen. With hundreds of thousands of people watching online and twenty thousand present at the stadium, it makes sense that the match reached the top trending spot on the front page of the site. It allowed the men to donate sixty thousand pounds to charities — one of which was Young Minds, a major mental health organization.
The group has brought in the new year with a new goal in mind: every Sunday would be a Sidemen Sunday. With videos posted weekly onto the Sidemen channel, the group has regained the praise and admiration from their fanbase with consistent hilarious content that rakes in millions of views per video.
This steadfast determination from the group has resulted in a collaboration with the YouTube company in the form of a YouTube Red series appropriately named "The Sidemen Show." With a cast that includes Jack Whitehall, Bear Grylls, Nicole Scherzinger, and more, it is clear that the supergroup is thriving.
The Sidemen know how to take trends and work them to their advantage, and with the hype Fortnite has generated, the members are avid players. By far the most skilled of the bunch is Vikkstar123 — or Vik, as the others call him. In the last Fortnite Friday tournament, he went head to head with Ninja, who is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in gaming today and is considered one of the best players. The goal of the tournament is to gain more kills than your opponent, and Vik managed to knock Ninja down to the losers' bracket, proving that he has underrated talent behind the screen.
In the past, the Sidemen were some of the first creators to consider hosting meet and greet events and large-scale matches that proved to mainstream media that YouTube creators ought to be taken seriously, and the supergroup has yet to lose steam. If you're looking for another source of entertainment on the internet, I'd highly recommend these guys. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I adore them, and it is for a good reason.
