Where the Hell is Matt

2005

Date: 2005 (first version) · June 2006 (Stride sponsorship) · Place: Matt Harding's laptop, then 70+ countries · Figures: Matt Harding, video-game designer turned traveller, 28 · Stride Gum, eventual sponsor · Tags: Travel, Earnest 01. A Man Dancing Badly Everywhere Matt Harding, 28, quits his job designing the video game Where's Waldo: The Great Waldo Search in 2003 and travels the world. He films himself doing a single goofy dance (knees and elbows bent, arms swinging) in front of landmarks, edits the clips together, posts to his website in 2005. The video, four minutes scored to Sweet Lullaby by Deep Forest, goes viral on forwards. Strangers email Harding asking him to come dance in their country. Stride Gum sees the original and sponsors the 2006 sequel; the 2008 version (Where the Hell is Matt 2008) is shot in 42 countries with crowds joining in. 02. The First Unironic Viral Travel Video Where the Hell is Matt is the era's countercurrent: not ironic, not cruel, not hostile. It is genuinely earnest in a way the rest of /b/-era culture finds embarrassing. The earnestness is the point. Harding releases new versions in 2008, 2012, and 2024. Every well-meaning travel-and-dance video on Instagram descends from him. The 2008 version has been viewed over 100 million times. Sources • Matt Harding, wherethehellismatt.com archive • Stride Gum case study, AdAge (2006) • Outside, 'How a Goofy Dance Made Matt Harding a Star' (2008)