In 2017, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, the founders of the comedy YouTube channel Smosh, split up. The Smosh YouTube channel was one of the first must-subscribe channels on the nascent video sharing website back in the early '00s. The channel accrued massive success as their following grew, mirroring the growing popularity of YouTube for the better part of two decades. Why would this unbeatable team go their separate ways when it seemed like everything was going their way?
Smosh began in 2002 when Padilla created the site smosh.com. The site quickly gained a large following. Smosh continued to grow when childhood friends Padilla and Hecox began uploading their videos (mostly featuring them lip-syncing popular cartoon theme songs) to the site. Being that this was the early days of the internet, Padilla actually had to pay every time someone wanted to watch one of their videos, making the arrival of YouTube a godsend. With the ability to upload videos to YouTube for free, Padilla and Hecox permanently moved the Smosh brand to the site in 2005. With their regular output of sketch comedy videos and a rapidly rising follower count, Padilla and Hecox were among the first wave of YouTube stars.
On June 14, 2017, Smosh's success under Hecox and Padilla's leadership came to a halt when the pair posted the video "Anthony is Leaving Smosh." Hecox and Padilla assured their viewers there was no bad blood; rather, Padilla was moving on and running his own YouTube channel and remarked he "had to do what was best for [him]." Considering Hecox and Padilla were integral to the Smosh brand, the announcement was a shock to the community.
A video posted on Padilla's personal YouTube channel the same day offered more insight into the situation. In the video titled "Why I Left Smosh," Padilla explained he felt hampered by the demands and creative restrictions Smosh's parent company, Defy, at the time placed on the channel. This, according to Padilla, was the primary reason he felt it necessary to part ways with the channel and brand he had spent more than a decade building and shaping with his best friend.
When Padilla left the company, Smosh had turned into a profitable YouTube empire: it now included a small team of actors who helped create video content for the primary Smosh channel as well as a group of spinoff channels like Smosh Games and Smosh Pit. In addition to overseeing Smosh operations, Hecox and Padilla made Smosh: The Movie and has made the film Ghostmates for YouTube Red. Smosh had evolved from a small channel to a YouTube trendsetter, establishing the rules for what passed for popular content, in turn giving future YouTubers a solid foundation on which to build their own channels.
Hecox and Padilla have remained friends but have gone on to achieve varying levels of success on their separate paths. Hecox remains the head of Smosh operations as well as the face of the company. Padilla still runs his own YouTube channel, which has 3.3 million subscribers as of July 2019. The pair may no longer be professionally linked, but the legacy they built with Smosh will never be forgotten.