Dancing Matt
I saw Watchmen last Sunday. I like viewing movie previews too so I’m usually in early in the cinema. But lately, I noticed that a lot of cinemas show more commercials and less previews. I naturally don’t like them until the Visa ad came up:
That was amusing. I actually liked that. I did some googling and found out about apparently internet celebrity Matt Harding. He’s probably really famous because he has his own Wikipedia entry:
Matthew “Matt” Harding (born September 27, 1976) is an American video game designer 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 received widespread coverage of his travel exploits in major print and broadcast media outlets, and was hired by Visa to star in their Travel Happy campaign.
He is originally from Westport, Connecticut. 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.
You can learn more about Dancing Matt in his website Where the Hell is Matt. According to his own website Matt is…
…is a 32-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.”
Hehehe…
And oh yeah, since everybody uses it as a random, far-away, out of nowhere place but never bothered finding out where really, Timbuktu is in Mali.
