Where the Hell is Matt?

Where the Hell is Matt? is an Internet phenomenon that features a video of Dancing Matt (Matt Harding) doing a dance "jig" in many different places around the world in 2005. The video garnered popularity on the video sharing site YouTube. There are now five major videos plus two outtakes and several background videos on YouTube. Matt dances alone in the first videos. In 2008 others join with him doing the dance "jig"; in 2010 he does the Diski Dance in South Africa. In 2012 he works with other dancers, sometimes using a local dance or another dance step.

While working in Australia for Activision on the project All Humans Must Die, Harding claimed that: "My life had become this rhythmic migration from bubble to bubble. You wake up in your apartment bubble, you get in your car bubble, you go to your work bubble, you get in your car, and then you go to you know, whatever, the outdoor shopping plaza bubble, back in your car bubble, back in your apartment bubble. There wasn’t a lot of exposure to the outside world … it’s really insulating." Quitting his job he traveled the world from 2003 to 2004, known by his friends for a particular dance, and while video recording each other in Vietnam in May 2003, his travel companions suggested he add the dance. The videos were uploaded to his website for friends and family to enjoy. After completing a second journey to Africa in 2004, Harding edited together 15 dance scenes, all with him center frame, with the background music "Sweet Lullaby" by Deep Forest. The original song uses samples from a dying Solomon Islands language which was recorded in 1971 by a French ethnomusicologist at the Solomon Islands near Papua New Guinea. The song, "Rorogwela" was sung by a young woman named Afunakwa. According to the video "Where the Hell is Afunakwa" by Matt Harding, Afunakwa died in 1998.

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.

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