Ian Hecox

Smosh is an American YouTube sketch comedy-improv collective, independent production company, and former social networking site founded by Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox.

In 2002, Padilla created a website named "smosh.com" for making Flash animations, and he was later joined by Hecox.

The franchise began when Anthony Padilla built a website in 2002, smosh.com, and made several different Flash animations.

He has stated that the name "Smosh" came from an incident where he mistook a friend explaining a Mosh pit as a "smosh pit".

Other content creators in the pre-YouTube era would also upload videos to smosh.com, including future YouTuber TomSka.

Later, his friend, Ian Hecox, joined the venture; Padilla and Hecox first met in the sixth grade.

They became friends, and quickly discovered their knack for comedy.

They began to post videos on Smosh's YouTube channel in the fall of 2005 and quickly became one of the most popular channels on the site.

The Smosh channel has over 10 billion views and over 25 million subscribers.

In 2005, they joined YouTube and made several videos together, lip syncing the theme songs to Mortal Kombat, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, the latter of which was their first video uploaded to the website.

At first, these videos were not intended to be posted online, but after they sent them to their friends, they started a YouTube channel.

One of Smosh's earliest videos, "Pokémon Theme Music Video", was released on November 28, 2005.

It followed the same style as their other earlier videos, featuring the duo lip-synching the original English theme song for the Pokémon anime.

However, the video instantly became much more popular than any of their other videos.

Over the course of its lifetime, it gained over 24 million views, becoming the most-viewed video on all of YouTube at that time.

This held that title until being dethroned by Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance".

It was later removed for copyright.

The first period spanned from May to June 2006, the second from April 2007 to September 2008, and the third span from January to August 2013.

The success of their Pokémon video and other videos led Smosh to be featured in the "Person of the Year: You" issue of Time, published December 13, 2006.

In 2009, Smosh prepared a massive redesign of Smosh.com, added a games section, and put extras in the video section.

Due to the channel's continued success, and Smosh's partnership with YouTube, the two recreated the video in November 2010, this time changing the words to be critical of The Pokémon Company taking down the Pokémon theme video.

Over the course of the next few years, Smosh began to diversify.

They started making short YouTube skits, such as their annual video series Food Battle and That Damn Neighbor, which were primarily filmed in and around a house in Rosemont, California.

Smosh continued to grow in popularity and became one of the most subscribed channels on YouTube.

In January 2010, Smosh launched the "Smosh Pit" feature, a blog that consists of various pieces of pop-culture trivia, and written comedy.

In addition, 2010 saw the channel launch 3 different Smosh-based web series: Ian Is Bored, which started as a collection of comedic videos by Hecox, but then turned into both Hecox and Padilla making vlog like videos, and renamed Smosh Is Bored; Ask Charlie, where people ask Charlie, from their January 2010 Charlie the Drunk Guinea Pig video, random questions; and Lunchtime with Smosh, a comedy series featuring Smosh getting and eating food from various places, and answering Twitter questions from their fans on Twitter.

Some of Smosh's most popular video series include Pokémon in Real Life and If ____ Was Real.

Also in early 2010, Smosh created the "iShut Up App" for Android phones as part of a Google sponsorship; it eventually made its way to the iTunes app store.

These songs (along with other original songs) have been released in four albums to date – Sexy Album (2010), If Music Were Real (2011), Smoshtastic (2012), and The Sweet Sound of Smosh (2013).

In 2011, Smosh was acquired by Alloy Digital (later rebranded to Defy Media), while also enjoying a 40% boost in viewership.

Since 2012, the Smosh brand has expanded to consist of multiple channels, including a Spanish-language channel (ElSmosh), a channel focused on gaming content (Smosh Games), and a variety channel (Smosh Pit).

The sketches have also included more actors.

The Smosh channel has experienced three different spans as the most subscribed YouTube channel.

In 2012, the duo started three new YouTube channels, ElSmosh, with Smosh videos dubbed in Spanish, Shut Up! Cartoons, with various animated videos, and Smosh Games, with gaming-related content hosted alongside Mariko "Mari" Takahashi, David "Lasercorn" Moss, Matthew Sohinki, and Joshua "Jovenshire" Ovenshire.

Some of Smosh's most popular videos are video-game themed music videos.

In 2017, Padilla left the channel to pursue independent ventures and focus on his own separate channel.

On November 6, 2018, Smosh's parent company Defy Media abruptly closed without warning.

Six days later, the Smosh cast released a video announcing that production of Smosh, Smosh Pit, and Smosh Games content was still ongoing, and that existing videos would be finished and other content would be released independently by Smosh on their YouTube channels.

They subsequently joined Mythical Entertainment after their company was purchased by Rhett & Link on February 22, 2019.

After four years of ownership under Mythical, it was announced in June 2023 that Padilla had returned to the channel, and that he, along with Hecox, had bought the company back from Mythical, re-establishing Smosh as an independent entity.