Where the Hell is Matt? 2012

"This is a wonderful feel-happy video!!!! 
This is how the world should get along!
When you have time, enjoy this...all humankind is so alike...it is all
the politics that separate countries...not the  people like you and
me...
This is like a trip around the world with a smile on your
face. 
Enjoy! "
  https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pwe-pA6TaZk?rel=0

"The story of the video     ----    Video put together by Matt Harding & Melissa Nixon I believe for Stride chewing gum

Matt is a 37-year-old deadbeat from Westport, Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. He got lucky, landing a job as a game designer in Los Angeles at a young age, and figured he had everything pretty much figured out.

At 23, he moved to Brisbane, Australia, where it's a pretty typical thing for people to take off and travel the planet for a while before settling down. He thought that sounded amazing, and was also starting to realize that maybe videogames weren't the only thing that mattered. So in early 2003, he quit his job to go wandering around Southeast Asia until the money ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he was.

A few months into his trip, he and his friend, Brad Welch, were taking pictures on the streets of Hanoi when Brad said "Hey, why don't you stand over there and do your stupid dance. I'll record it." Matt did it, and he thought it looked pretty funny, so he kept on doing it everywhere he went.

That turned out to be a very good idea.

He put the video of his dancing adventures on his blog (back then people had things called "blogs"), and then in 2005 he found it on a new site called YouTube, where some kid had uploaded it, pretending to be him, and like a million people had already watched it. The kid was collecting donations and apparently got about $200 out of it. Good for him.

Matt briefly got micro-famous as "That guy who dances on the internet. No, not him. The other guy. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny."

In the midst of all that, Matt got an email from a chewing gum company called Stride. They asked if he'd be interested in making another dancing video for them. He asked if they'd pay for it. They said, "Yeah." He asked if he could go wherever he wanted. They said, "Pretty much." So he said, "Sure!"

That actually happened.

He made the video, and he got to bring his girlfriend, Melissa, with him to film it. It was awesome. And people liked it. The second video made Matt even more micro-famous, transitioning briefly into quasi-famous.

He mostly just danced in front of iconic landmarks, but along the way he went to a country called Rwanda, and since there aren't any landmarks in Rwanda that you'd want to dance in front of, instead he just went to a small village and danced with a bunch of kids. The kids joined him immediately and without hesitation. That ended up being the best thing that happened to him on the trip. The kids taught him that people are a whole lot more interesting than old landmarks and monuments.

Matt went back to Stride and told them he did it all wrong and they needed to send him around the planet again. They said, "Okay," and in 2008 he put out another video that showed thousands of people laughing, smiling, and goofing around together. It took him five years and three tries, but he finally got it right that time."