Wes Johnson wears many hats online. Known to many for his popular streams on Twitch and YouTube, Wes is also an avid cosplayer, writer, and gamer in his spare time. Some of his biggest personal ventures include his Wes_IRL Twitch channel, and the IRL Bros YouTube that he runs with his brother. Wes is known to many roleplayers for his Yeet4Initiative Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and the strong positive community he has fostered throughout his career. 

But before all that, Wes was a member of Smosh Games. Beginning his time there as an editor in 2012, Wes would eventually work his way up to become a major member of the on air crew in 2014.  In this interview we discuss how his passion for video games turned into a career, and how his time at Smosh helped to propel him to success as a streamer on his own terms. 

When did you get your start at Smosh Games? 

I started editing behind the scenes in 2012, but I didn't really start coming onto the Smosh Games channel as a host until 2014. 

How did you first get involved with Smosh?

Sohinki, Joven, Lasercorn and I, and a few other people worked together at this place called Mahalo. We made video game walk-through videos. 

So jump forward in the future, after Mahalo I started working production for a motion capture company, but unfortunately they went bankrupt. Then I started working for a video game charity, but they ran into issues with their website. We actually had to stop all work on charity campaigns because their website just didn't function. 

So obviously I was in need of new opportunities, and I started messaging Joven, Sohinki and Lasercorn who were now at Smosh, to see if they had any openings. They were like 'hey, we need editors' -- and I'm like, and 'I can edit, I can do a thing.'  And they were like -- 'yeah, come on in.' 

I had the opportunity to audition with a video of Ian and Anthony playing Game Time. Immediately the team liked my editing style and I was hired. 

From there I edited from, October 2012 until some time in 2014. 

After that there was a crazy part of my schedule where they brought me on as talent, but I was still being paid as an editor, and I worked both full time jobs. So as full time talent and full time editor. That led to days where, if we were shooting, I would get there at my normal editing time, edit for maybe 45 minutes, go in, set up all of the game consoles, all of the capture, all of the audio, make sure all that was good to go, because that was also part of my job. Then we would shoot until 6pm, and I'd have to go back and do a full day of editing on everything we shot. Some days I wouldn't leave until 4 in the morning.

And I would have to come back in at 9. 

So I was exhausted to the point where I started getting nauseous whenever I opened Premiere, and I had to go to Matt and I was just like -- look, I can't do this anymore, I'm literally dying. 

That sounds like a pretty difficult workload. How did you manage to keep up with everything?

That was really only on shoot days. 

Then the days we had the big bulk shoots, those days, I was like so stressed out, because I also have videos to edit. So it was a chaotic, really crazy time.

It was very tough for a while. And I kind of leaned on another one of the editors. I had to tell them I have time to do X, Y or Z, I can't do all three of them. 

Eventually they brought Tim on, and that gave me the opportunity to move away from the tech side of things, and become Smosh Games on air talent full time. But for a little while, I think it was maybe four or five months, where it was just -- it was so stressful in my body, I was getting so sick. It was rough.

It was tough. But it was worth it. In the end, I got to make some cool videos that I'm still proud of.

Do you ever miss your time at Smosh, or has it been nice venturing out on your own?

I will say, I miss the friends I had at Smosh for sure. I miss my coworkers and I miss being in videos with everybody. I loved being a part of Smosh Games. I loved doing the stuff with Smosh Second, and being a part of the whole family because it is a family.

But as far as Defy Media goes, there was so much stuff behind the scenes with that. A lot of things behind the scenes that I've never talked about that left me feeling stressed out anytime I came to work.

The hardest part was in the back of my head I'm thinking this is ridiculous, I'm getting paid to play video games and be in videos with my friends. But at the same time there was so much going on behind the scenes that a lot of people didn't see, and that was the hard part. 

We have fun together. But we only show so much, and we were only allowed to show so much of ourselves. 

When I did finally leave, there was actually this feeling of relief. There was of course this feeling of sadness as well. On the one hand I was leaving the friends I had made behind, but not having to deal with the stress made such a big difference in my life. 

Now I'm on my own and I'm getting to do stuff with my brother. So we're making fun videos together for our IRL Bros YouTube channel. 

I've been more focused on charity work too. Like creating videos trying to raise money for St Jude Children's Hospital.

I'm getting a ton of people involved in that. And I've managed to come up with a sizable budget to make some really cool content. These are projects that I've wanted to work on my whole life. And I'm finally getting a chance to do it. So it's been a lot of fun. 

You've also been writing more, what kinds of things have you been working on?

I love writing and I love having the opportunity to build my own worlds.

I've been focusing mostly on fiction, fantasy, things like that. Mostly I've been writing down my ideas. And then I'll meet with various people and writing partners, who can actually kind of contain the chaos that goes on in my brain. Also helps that a lot of them can type, because I poke type. I'm not a fast typer at all.

It's kind of funny because I'll be poking at the keyboard, typing very slowly to the point where it often frustrates the people that I'm working with, to be like -- 'no, just give me the damn laptop and tell me what to write.' I'm like, okay, cool, glad we're on the same page with this. 

But writing and getting creative is a lot of fun. My cousin is the editor of Supernatural, so actually I've been talking with him and writing a potential spin off now that the show has ended.

I'm mostly just writing that as a fun pitch. Because I like the universe and I like the world, I just love coming up with ideas and stories. Even if it's just for me, I like the creative process of writing. I've also been working on my own Dungeons & Dragons campaign called Yeet4Initiative on my Twitch channel. So there's a lot of different ideas floating around my brain. 

It was something that I lost for a long time, because there was a lot going on with work. That was another thing that I got back when I left Smosh Games. I had the opportunity to finally take a break, and just rest. Pretty soon my brain started firing again and not having that stress anymore really sparked that creativity again. I ended up writing like 35 pages for a random idea one day. And I was like -- whoa, okay, cool -- that creativity bug really hit me. And it's always at four in the morning. You're going down to go to sleep and you're like -- no, but how about this? -- and then you get up and you write until like 8am, even though your body is telling you to go to sleep, but you're just like no, just two more pages!

You're also a big fan of cosplay.  What is it about cosplay that excites you?

I really do love cosplay.  It's a little bit of escapism, but it's also the community.  You go to a convention dressed as a character you love and people come up to you, and you get to make friends because you both love the same thing. 

But even more than that you can get dressed up, do photo shoots. I really love creating costumes and making really cool photo sets. Cosplay is another thing that sparks my creativity, and I really enjoy becoming that character and making some really cool shoots happen. Plus a lot of my friends are photographers and they really love the art style. 

Mostly we're friends that get together and try and make some really cool content. It's for fun, and gives us a reason to hang out.

I managed to take it and do it as part of my career too, which is amazing. But I do it because I love it. One of the first Cosplay things I did was The Legend of Zelda, like, recreation of some of the stuff of Ocarina of Time.

And Sarah, at Cosplay, she's the vision behind it. She made all of the Link outfits, like hand sewed and embroidered these really cool Triforce logos on the whole thing. It was such a cool idea for a photo set, and I was such a huge Legend of the Zelda fan.

And I'd only done one costume before that, and it was ordered from China. It was a terrible, Devil May Cry 4 Dante outfit. 

And that's another part of the creative side that's really cool. Cosplayers are prop makers, costume designers, models and even actors. And they also love these characters, so they apply their skills to that. 

It's all these people from different backgrounds and different talents coming together because they love this one thing. For example, I have a friend, she lives in New York and she's a lawyer, a very successful lawyer, you might not expect it but she loves doing cosplay. And it's something just really cool for anyone from any different fandom to get together and do something they're passionate about. Whether it's anime or video games, it's an excuse for people to come together. 

It's a really cool community of people. Which is one of the reasons why I love it.