It’s strange how online videos can go viral and take on life as Internet sensations.

Take a look at the most popular YouTube videos and you have to wonder, with some, what the viewers are thinking, much less the posters. Just about everything is available in online video in some form or another.

Videos of impossibly cute puppies, personal blogs, WNBA brawls and movie scenes can all capture the imagination—and viewing time—of online surfers.

They’re entertainment. People spend endless hours watching them.

Videos online supply a nosy, often voyeuristic, craving. Or they can give us insight into another culture, another place, a way of being. People use them to keep in touch with friends and loved ones. They can be snapshots of history.

Like most forms of media, they’re about as good as the thoughts and action they inspire and the functions they serve.

The online video whirlwind caught 31-year-old former video game developer Matt Harding of Seattle, Wash., who saved up money, quit his day job in Australia, and first traveled and danced across the world in 2003 and 2004.

Visiting exotic locations, he stopped and recorded himself dancing a jig. Then he compiled these dances into one video posted in 2005.

From there, the sensation took off, and, millions of clicks later, he’s just completed his third installment. (In a little more than a month, it’s garnered nearly 8 million YouTube views.)

Here’s just a short list of places he’s danced during his three trips: Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland; Wadi Rum, Jordan; Soweto, South Africa; Batik, Morocco; Timbuktu, Mali; Redwood National Forest, Calif.; Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.; Tsavo, Kenya; the Demilitarized Zone, Korea; Chuuk, Micronesia; Machu Picchu, Peru; the Impenetrable Forest, Uganda; Chicago, Ill.; Tel Aviv, Israel; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Mulindi, Rwanda; Bangkok, Thailand.

According to his Website, he’s been to 80 countries and danced in 71 of them.

Harding had two trips sponsored by Stride gum, but it’s hard to see him as a sellout. Those videos simply have a short acknowledgment at the end, and his own Website contains a link to the gum manufacturer’s home on the Web.

Quietly moving in their own way, the videos are remarkably simple. It’s just Harding dancing, albeit in some pretty spectacular and fascinating landscapes.

The videos also have become more inclusive. After the second installment, Harding started record himself with some of the people who’d written to him from across the globe.

There’s a certain poignancy about dancing with random people across the world, suggesting there’s something that truly binds us across cultures, languages, boundaries and time. In that, there’s both wisdom and fun.

People are impressed and moved by Harding’s adventurous work, mentioning how it conjures thoughts of peace and the universality of laughter and joy. “World peace! That’s what the video says to me,” wrote one fan.

In a world torn by strife, there seems to be a yearning for just that kind of inspiration.

Another fan writes: “Like a smile, it can easily be shared the whole world over without translation, and you have proved that beyond a doubt. Bravo!”

With all the media and public attention, Harding now seems to be eyeing his next move. He wrote in his online journal about a book and possibly working with the United Nations on a project.

For his fans, it will surely be interesting to see where takes his dance next.

As one viewer commented, “This is a dance that should never end.”

(On the Net: www.youtube.com/user/mattharding2718 and www.wherethehellismatt.com.)