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Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth
Credit: Matt Harding & Melissa Nixon
What are these humans doing?
Dancing, says Astronomy picture of the day.
Discover the cosmos! - it says. “Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. ”
And for today, July 22:
“Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing.
“Happiness and dancing transcend political boundaries and occur in practically every human society.”
Matt Harding, “traveled through many nations on Earth, started dancing, and filmed the result.
“The video is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species.
“Happiness is frequently contagious — few people are able to watch the above video without smiling.”
Says Matt on his home page, Where the hell is Matt? »»»
Matt is a 31-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.”
The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he’d be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they’d be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.
In 2006, Matt took a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal.
The second video made Matt even more quasi-famous. In fact, for a brief period in July, he was semi-famous.
Things settled down again, and then in 2007 Matt went back to Stride with another idea. He realized his bad dancing wasn’t actually all that interesting, and that other people were much better at being bad at it. He showed them his inbox, which, as a result of his semi-famousness, was overflowing with emails from all over the planet. He told them he wanted to travel around the world one more time and invite the people who’d written him to come out and dance too.
The Stride people thought that sounded like yet another very good idea, so they let him do it. And he did. And now it’s done. And he hopes you like it.
Matt lives in Seattle, Washington with his girlfriend, Melissa, and dog, Sydney. He hasn’t had a real job since Stride called him up. Matt doesn’t mind working, but he doesn’t much care for having to show up at the same place every day.
Matt is not rich. Matt also doesn’t have some magical secret for traveling cheaply. He does it pretty much the same way everybody else does.
Matt is left-handed and, “When Matt was younger, he could hang seven spoons on his face at once. Sadly, puberty made Matt’s face less conducive to spoon-hanging,” he say.
(Thanks for sharing, John P)
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July 23rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
Sometimes someone comes along with a fun idea, and this is one of those times.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:07 pm
they had my “music” playing in the background!
I will sue their asses off of all of them!