Questions about “Man Dancing” on YouTube

I had a healthy discussion about the YouTube clip “Man Dancing” with a frequent reader of this blog. In a world where videos can be easily doctored, this reader had some serious doubt about “Man Dancing”. (Choosing between two bad places — blindly accepting everything or blindly rejecting everything, I would rather people take the “rejection” route as it may be less “harmful”.) So to settle our differences, I went on to the web to do some quick reseach. In case you forget, here is the YouTube video before I tell you what I found.

“Man Dancing” — First added August 04, 2005. Views: 773,010

Well, a quick research on the web found a few pieces of news which satisfied my curiosity. Plus Matt Harding, the man dancing in the video, has a Wikipedia entry! I hope the reader will find this satisfactory too.

An excerpt from Washington Post, “The Guy Who Danced Around the Globe“, Sunday, October 22, 2006; Page P04

So, where the hell is Matt? We found him in Seattle, but before that, Matt Harding, 30, was everywhere. In 2003, the video-game maker performed a silly free-form dance in more than a dozen countries, which he filmed and then posted on his Web site at http://www.wherethehellismatt.com. Two years later, a gum company caught sight of his video and sent him off again to dance and travel on seven continents. Since Harding’s return, about five million Web viewers have seen his international boogie. Andrea Sachs spoke to Harding on the phone about dancing his way around the globe.

Q. Describe your travel background.

A. Travel to me wasn’t something on my radar as a thing you could do. Growing up, I’d been to Europe and around the country, but I’d never traveled outside of my comfort zone before. Then, when I was 23, I moved to Australia for a job. . . . After a couple of years of living in Australia and saving money, I went back home to the States. I spent all of my savings on a six-month trip in 2003. I went to 17 countries.

How much did you spend on that trip?

Enough to buy a decent car.

From Travel Editor of NEWS.com.au, “You make me feel like dancing”

MATT Harding can’t dance particularly well. By his own admission, the 29 year-old video game designer from Seattle used to annoy his co-workers by “hovering over their desks and dancing”.

But this did not stop Harding from being paid to dance around the world. During the first half of 2006, Harding danced his way through 39 countries across the seven continents, courtesy of sponsorship from a chewing gum company.

The end product is a short video that has become a hit on the web. Over two million people have watched a grinning, gangly Harding dance since the video was posted two months ago on YouTube, a video-sharing website.

From Burlington Free Press, “Globe-trotting dancing fool visits Champlain College“, Friday, November 10, 2006

When traveling around the world, from the African savanna to the fjords of Norway, Matt Harding isn’t in search of the finest restaurants or most exotic hotels. He’s just looking for a place to exercise his happy feet.

A self-described 30-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut, Harding’s star has quickly risen in the past year as “that guy who dances on the Internet.” The one-time video game designer has scored what many would consider the ultimate dream job, wandering the planet on someone else’s dime, videotaping himself doing a frenetic jig in each country he visits. That’s it. There’s no catch. Really.

“I just did what I wanted to do and it ended up being something I could make a living doing, for a little while at least,” Harding said Thursday during a visit to Champlain College — his first stop on what he hopes turns into a college tour. Dressed casually in a striped sweater and cargo pants, the bespectacled globetrotter had just captivated professor Tom Myers’ global business class with stories of his travels.

Here is a new 2006 video from Matt before I tell you more about why I decided to blog about this as oppose to answer this privately.
“2006. Where the hell is Matt Harding dancing now?” — First added June 23, 2006. Views: 45,496

Here are my reasons of answering this question in my blog:

1. OK, I am lazy. If the question is interesting enough to spend time answering, I might as well blog about it. (big smile)
2. It is important we challenge what we see and hear on the internet. I would rather have people questioning something they see than people just accepting what they see at face value.
3. Well, Matt managed to make a living doing what he did and got some traveling from it. That was neat, I suppose.
4. Lastly and most importantly. I think we are just in the beginning of exploring the power of YouTube. And I want to use any excuse or reason to dig deeper and learn about it. I think Matt has the “crazy dancing around the world”-market cornered, I will just have to find my own thing on it. (smile)