SoftlyFir

yes, it was actually smo hide and seek on november 9, 2021! fir uploaded his vod of it here; i couldn't find it on smant's or cj's vod channels, so it might be the only vod that's up. it's the same streaming session as all three of their first hide and seek videos: 1 2 3

(for fun: the idea of smo hide and seek was born at 3:18 in this video.)

before that, fir and smant were friendly with each other - they were twitter mutuals since 2018, fir has mentioned smant in passing multiple times during his speedruns and in one video that may have been delisted, he did a challenge similar to one smant had done in january 2020 and gave him credit/advertised smant too, smant invited fir to subarea showdown (a 1v1 smo subarea based challenge he ran in 2019) that fir never replied to and smant still sometimes brings up being butthurt about, and smant raided fir at least once before h&s. smant has also frequently referred to fir as one of the first people he ever met in the smo speedrunning discord server.

I Tried Speedrunning Super Mario Odyssey Without SEEING OR HEARING the game (January 26, 2020; Fir also mentions Smant in the vid)

(whatever this was, this was a tweet to fir)

(also whatever this was, looks like fir asked something about this post and smant answered it. smant's reply here came up when i searched up posts from smant mentioning fir, even though fir isn't mentioned in the original tweet, which is how i deduced this.)

them following each other since 2018 can only be proven by the fact that i followed them on twitter since 2018 and when i saw they followed each other i got extremely excited since they were the only smo speedrunners i watched at the time lol

and for fun: in the first hide and seek video, lycel was actually supposed to be in place of fir but couldn't make it, so smant invited fir instead. lycel learned to speedrun from smant when she was trying different mincaps challenges: here

cj got into speedrunning because he watched smant's smo speedruns and thought to himself "i could do that too" (anecdote he frequently tells) and proceeded to get a handful of speedrun records, notably in mincaps which smant was also grinding before it got removed. which resulted in smant having beef with that part of the smo speedrun community buuuut we don't have to get into that.

cj started in 2019 (a year after both smant and fir, at least in terms of smo) but he did collabs with smant in early 2021 before even smant and fir were in an official video together: a small 3d world collab with lycel and abbybagel as well, and then a 1v1 in smant's I challenged the Mario Speedrun Master…and won. Here's how., which helped cj blow up. (cj's video: I got sent a broken copy of Mario Odyssey.) however, i'm pretty sure they were acquaintances/friends before then considering that they were running the same category for a couple of years (and the cancellation of mincaps would have affected cj as well; smant was very adamant of protecting the category when this drama went down.) not to mention nut jump dreams has been up since april 2020, which smant is the biggest fan of.

they collabed a few more times before hide and seek, and did two 2p soul links in early 2022 (after the first few hide and seeks, and which pchal reacted to) before inviting fir as their third.

fir and cj also knew of each other, though i believe the first time i saw them in a collab outside of hide and seek and among us (which i'm not counting because the cast is so big and rotating, and i don't want to go through all the sessions/vods, and really only started in early 2023 anyway) was alpharad's super mario battle royale stream from march 2024. before that, and before hide and seek, the only instance i've found them knowing/interacting with each other pre-hide and seek is when cj participated in fir's august 28 2021 community clash on twitch and won, with the only documentation being this tweet:

i cannot find a vod for this on a vod channel or an unofficial twitch vod archive so this is all i have of this lmao