Tricky Groove

Web sensation Matt Harding reveals how he committed crimes of dance across the world.

Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 3:37pm

YouTube BrandWatch invites you to watch this “confession” by Matt Harding, whose “Where the Hell Is Matt?” video was such a sensation in 2008.

Name:	"Matt Confesses: Where the Hell Is Matt? Video an 'Elaborate Hoax' "
Stats:	The runaway viral YouTube hit of 2008 featured a guy, Matt Harding, dancing badly in public all around the world and getting people to dance along with him. "Where the Hell Is Matt?" has been viewed more than 17 million times. The New York Times and Time were two of the dozens of news publications to gush about the video hit. (We wrote about it in this space in September.) Cadbury's Stride Gum signed him as a sponsor. Remember now? Well, a few things have happened since then. First, an army of critics remain convinced Matt faked the whole thing. And now Matt is back to answer them in a new video, posted just after the New Year, that's triggered a new buzz: more than 20,000 viewings and 118 text responses on YouTube.
What you see:	Matt is called onstage at an event in Monterey, Calif., to discuss how he produced the most talked-about YouTube video of 2008. Acknowledging that the army of skeptics is growing in numbers, he breaks down and tells us, "The whole thing is an elaborate hoax." Nah! Can't be! Well, Matt goes on to explain in some detail how they used animatronic robots to masquerade as people dancing alongside him in every town. That shot of him dancing in a rain-soaked alley in Zanzibar? That, too, he tells us, was faked. Or was it? Never once does he crack a smile. He ends his presentation by calling audience members to dance onstage with him. They're just bad enough to convince us he's legit.
Takeout/Takeaway:	The blogosphere and Twitterverse are buzzing in the past week: Is Matt coming clean, or has he just pulled off a major dis of his many skeptics? Either way, it breathes new life into this viral video.
Social Media Effect:	Fame is truly fleeting on the Internet. But Matt Harding may have just pulled off another coup for his dancing video—and for his sponsor, Stride Gum.

YouTube BrandWatch is The Big Money's exploration into how the world's best-known businesses, so adept at managing their images offline, are being perceived online, where control is harder to come by. Every week, The Big Money features a corporate-themed video that's had significant viewership on YouTube: some approved, some unapproved, some mashed-up combinations of the two. And we'll ask our readers to vote on how the video affects the brands. We think the responses will surprise you, and provide a window onto what is fast becoming the most important playground for corporate games. (Note: This feature has no official relationship to YouTube or its owner, Google.)