Matt is Back!!

Matthew "Matt (Mathias)" Harding 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.

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.

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 of this video, since he usually travels on a limited budget.

His videos are viewable on YouTube, Google Video, and his own site www.wherethehellismatt.com. His second video has been watched 9,726,484 times on YouTube as of June 22, 2008 and Harding's YouTube channel is ranked "#30 - Most Viewed (All Time) - Directors" as of March 25, 2007. Harding released his third dancing video on June 20, 2008. The video is the product of 14 months of traveling in 42 countries.