About Matt
Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he'd saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is.
A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do that dance. I'll record it." He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It's actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.
A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as "That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny."
The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.
In 2006, Matt took a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal.
The second video made Matt even more quasi-famous. In fact, for a brief period in July, he was semi-famous.
Things settled down again, and then in 2007 Matt went back to Stride with another idea. He realized his bad dancing wasn't actually all that interesting, and that other people were much better at being bad at it. He showed them his inbox, which, as a result of his semi-famousness, was overflowing with emails from all over the planet. He told them he wanted to travel around the world one more time and invite the people who'd written him to come out and dance too.
The Stride people thought that sounded like yet another very good idea, so they let him do it. And he did. And now it's done. And he hopes you like it.
Matt lives in Seattle, Washington with his girlfriend, Melissa, and dog, Sydney. He hasn't had a real job since Stride called him up. Matt doesn't mind working, but he doesn't much care for having to show up at the same place every day.
Matt is not rich. Matt also doesn't have some magical secret for traveling cheaply. He does it pretty much the same way everybody else does.
Matt thinks Americans need to travel abroad more.
Matt was a very poor student and never went to college. When he got older, he was pleased to discover that no one actually cares. Matt doesn't want to imply that college is bad or anything. He's just saying is all. There's other ways to fill your head.
Matt is left-handed.
When Matt was younger, he could hang seven spoons on his face at once. Sadly, puberty made Matt's face less conducive to spoon-hanging.
Matt's Xbox Live screen name is BadDancer. He plays a lot of Rock Band.
Matt has a little piece of extra cartilage sticking out on the rim of one ear and a little hole in the same place on the other ear. Since saying so on this page, he's been informed that the extra piece of cartilage is called a Darwinian Tubercle. Matt thinks this is pretty much the greatest name for anything ever.
Matt has never lost a staring contest.
Matt Harding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matthew "Matt (Mathias)" Harding (born September 27, 1976) is an American video game developer and Internet celebrity known as Dancing Matt for his viral videos that show him dancing in front of landmarks and street scenes in various international locations. Harding has since achieved notoriety through widespread coverage of his travel exploits in major print and broadcast media outlets.[1][2][3][4]
Originally from Westport, Connecticut, where he began his game industry career working for a video game specialty store called Cutting Edge Entertainment, Harding later worked as an editor for GameWeek Magazine in Wilton, Connecticut, and then as a software developer for Activision in Santa Monica, California and then Brisbane, Australia.
Harding claims that a sarcastic joke of his about the popularity of shoot 'em up games led Pandemic Studios to develop the game Destroy All Humans!, on which he received a conceptual credit. Saying he "didn't want to spend two years of my life writing a game about killing everyone", he quit his job and began traveling, leading to the production of his first video.[5] Harding has subsequently moved to Seattle and continues to work on video games.
'Where the Hell is Matt?' video
Harding was known for a particular dance, and while videotaping each other in Vietnam, his traveling companion suggested he add the dance. The videos were uploaded to his website for friends and family to enjoy. Later, Harding edited together 15 dance scenes, all with him center frame, with the background music "Sweet Lullaby (Nature's Dancing 7" Mix)", a 1992 world music song by Deep Forest that uses lyrics from a dying Solomon Islands language.
(The original "Sweet Lullaby" music video, which was nominated by MTV for music video of the year, consists of a little girl riding a tricycle in front of iconic scenes from around the globe. The same clip was used as a station identification for the SBS television network.)
The video was passed around by e-mail and eventually became "viral", with his server getting 20,000 or more hits a day as it was discovered, generally country by country due to language barriers, before the launch of major video upload sites.
Harding created a second version of the video in 2006, with additional dancing scenes from subsequent travels, called "Dancing 2006". At the request of Stride, a gum brand, he accepted sponsorship[6] of this video, since he usually travels on a limited budget.