Where the Hell is Matt?

More and more videos are shared thought internet every day. “Where the hell is Matt?” is a perfect example of a viral video, meaning a record that “becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through internet media sharing websites” (Wikipedia).

Matthew Harding was only a videogame designer, now he is an Internet star. He became famous because he did a funny dance all around the world and he posted the video on YouTube. He got sponsors and started dancing by himself in front of famous landmarks of the most well-known countries. Later on, he discovered that was much more interesting having local people dancing with him from all the different cities. He toured the world one more time to make another video. He had around 2,387 people dancing with him and about 30 million people have seen his videos. In a lecture he explains how he invented and achieved the project. NASA featured Matt’s video on their APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) website, titled "Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth".

In my opinion Matt’s video demonstrates the power of digital social media, in this case YouTube: it would have been almost impossible to have the same amount of people watching it if it had been an attachment to an email. He wouldn’t have probably got any sponsors and would have travelled the world at his own expenses. On TV the video would have probably been perceived as a kind of commercial and nobody would have paid too much attention.

When people saw his videos on YouTube, they started writing to invite him to go to their countries; thanks to them he was able to continue and organize more “dancing events”.

Matt’s dancing can be considered a sort of flash mob, meaning that people congregate and perform an unusual and odd act for a short time, then they go away. The flash mob wants to grab the attention in a different way and it is more and more used in advertising and in social events, some of the most famous examples are “Time Freezes in Central London” and “Students Unleash A Pillow Fight On Manhattan”.

Matt decided to go further and he developed a “hoax in a hoax”: he said that all his videos were a hoax made with Photoshop. Before doing it he met a friend who works in the communication field to get some advice. His friend recommended him to make up a ridiculous and totally absurd story in order to be sure people wouldn’t believe it. Matt decided to say that he was an actor hired by a marketing agency (with a funny-invented name) and that everything was fake; he used crazy proofs (the funniest part he said was that they created even robots to simulate people). Some internet blogs, websites and social media (like Twitter) did not get the joke and people started thinking that his video really wasn’t true.

“The fake hoax project” is a wonderful example of the digital communication power and the influence of the social media to change the perception about things. People still trust Internet news and sometimes they do not reflect on it. Just wonder why Matt said it was a hoax. The proofs he brings are pretty hilarious, especially the robots one. For him, it was absolutely obvious that it was a hoax, but it wasn’t perceived like this by many people.

In my opinion this joke is a little bit too risky to do as you can easily loose your credibility and even get in trouble with your sponsors. Matt should have made up a crazier story, having totally illogical and bizarre proofs as the ones he used were perceived as real.

I think that the power of social media and YouTube in particular is growing day by day. There are videos that exist only in this medium and that could not survive without it. It is important sharing stories but let’s keep the mind open to reflect on the message; do not be just astonished by their magical effects.