After nearly a decade of mediocre videos displaying a clear identity crisis, beloved YouTube brand Smosh has once again found its creative footing.
When the Smosh YouTube channel was created in 2005, it was a recipe for instant success. Its founders, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, were longtime best friends. The boys’ infectious personalities, strong friendship and joint sense of humour – along with the freshness of a new digital medium that had not yet developed a clear identity – allowed the duo to skyrocket to Internet fame, becoming some of the first online influencers of the modern age.
Hecox and Padilla became known for their sketch comedy, which often depicted a fictionalized, over-the-top recreation of the duo’s lives as best friends. The brand’s success could be credited not only to the individual personalities of Hecox and Padilla, but also to the strong friendship the pair shared.
As with all good things, this would eventually come to an end.
In 2011, Smosh was acquired by Alloy Digital which would later become Defy Media. Their parent company’s budget and resources helped the sketches at first, but the acquisition would eventually prove detrimental to Smosh’s core identity. As Hecox and Padilla became overloaded with other projects spearheaded by Defy, their friendship began to deteriorate off-camera. Eventually, their frustration and lack of creative control would cause Padilla to leave the brand entirely.
This left Smosh in a difficult position. If a brand’s identity is built on the foundation of a duo’s strong friendship, it will inevitably struggle if one member of the pair leaves. While the channel maintained a healthy (yet decreasing) view count for quite a while, I would argue that many of the remaining views were a result of Smosh’s earlier success. This is evidenced in the comments section of these videos, with many commenters requesting a return to the “old Smosh” and hoping for Padilla to return.
Smosh quickly became experimental, trying out new sketches with an increasingly diverse cast – an understandable decision, yet the simplicity of Hecox and Padilla’s original videos was lost in the process. Furthermore, the company’s increasingly corporate and “family-friendly” image made the humour feel watered-down. One could argue that Smosh was broadening its horizons, but in many ways, the brand was becoming a hollow shell of its former self.
While many of Smosh’s original sketches were filmed in a suburban house, the videos shifted to an office setting after Padilla’s departure. The house in which Hecox and Padilla had filmed added charm, personality and relatability to their sketches, all of which was lost through the shift to a corporate setting.
After Defy Media’s shutdown in 2018 and subsequent acquisition by Mythical Entertainment, the Smosh team found more creative freedom, but the company’s original magic was nowhere to be found. Improvised videos were added to the channel’s lineup, but occasional sketch comedy and music videos left the channel without a clear vision. Hecox would eventually admit that the primary Smosh channel “[hadn’t] quite found its footing over the past few years,” and that they “[kept] trying to find a voice for it, and [nothing was] clicking.”
Interestingly, the Smosh cast and crew seemed to enjoy their time creating content on the company’s secondary channel, Smosh Pit. These videos, which include “Try Not to Laugh” challenges, are more entertaining than many of the main channel’s modern outings because they better display the true friendships between company members.
It was evident that there are genuine friendships within the company and that its new members have a lot to offer. These videos had become a new niche, drawing in a new crowd, albeit much smaller than the tens of millions of viewers that skyrocketed Hecox and Padilla to fame. It felt as though the secondary channel had become the main place for company members to create content they enjoyed, while the main Smosh page was nothing but a series of largely soulless attempts to maintain any sort of relevancy on the original channel.
This would completely change on June 20th when out of nowhere, the primary channel would upload a video revealing that Hecox and Padilla had purchased Smosh and intended to create more content in the style of their old videos.
And they did. Smosh’s first new sketch was released soon after the announcement, and the enormous shift from the channel’s recent content was undeniable. While Hecox and Padilla have plenty of people working behind the scenes (just as they did throughout their prime), the team took care to return to the nostalgic feelings brought by the channel’s most popular era. While many references were made to the channel’s history, the most important element is that Hecox and Padilla resumed their roles as the videos’ writers, directors and stars.
Hecox and Padilla have not only rekindled their friendship, but they have also rediscovered their passion for making silly, light-hearted content with one another. Their excitement can be felt throughout their latest sketches, especially when compared to the videos they created directly prior to Padilla’s departure as their friendship was falling apart.
For those who found the channel during Padilla’s absence, the larger Smosh cast and crew continue to appear in challenges and games on the Smosh Pit channel. This way, the hardworking team at Smosh can continue their work and enjoy creating more on-screen content, but their efforts no longer conflict with the identity of the main Smosh channel.
Padilla’s return is certainly a defining factor in this shift, but it isn’t the only one. Through reclaiming ownership of their shared business and reviving their friendship in a genuine way, Hecox and Padilla haven’t just made a half-hearted attempt to regain views on their channel; they’ve recaptured the magic that allowed Smosh to succeed in the first place.