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The Star Wars Kid Is Back
An anonymous reader writes "It was eight years ago that Ghyslain Raza slashed his way into our hearts with his Star Wars Kid video. Sadly, Raza suffered from severe bullying and abuse for his video and eventually ended up in a psychiatric ward for children. However, his video was seen 1 billion times and multiple thousands of geeks came immediately to his defense. While those must have been the worst years of his life, things are now looking up."
you used to hear these things on slashdot FIRST, sometimes several days ahead of the mainstream media, and now slashdot is at least a week behind. This is old, old news at this point.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
So what?
As I recall, there was a group of people who contributed to buying him an iPod as a way of trying to show that not everyone who saw the video was laughing at him. Any idea whether he got it? TFA doesn't mention it.
Those who can't sue.
I'm sorry to hear that the Star Wars kid decided to be a blood sucking lawyer.
I hope he at least gets a BJ or two out of it.
He looks cute older.
There are millions of lawyers, but there is only one Star Wars Kid. Dare to be different!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I bet we all played with some sort of wooden sword for make believe purposes at one time. It's called childhood. It's too bad that it's the easy way to find fun at someone else's expense.
I hope this dude is getting all the woman he wants.
I was worried that his negative experience would turn him into a ruthless, soulless shell of a human being. Thank god he became a lawyer instead.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Clearly this article was not submitted by a "true" Star Wars fan. Use the force dude, use the force.
Hope is the currency of fools
He was anonymous again. Took him 8 years. His 15 minutes of fame were finally forgotten. He could continue with his life.
Now Slashdot and that other website (rtfa) put up his picture, location, job/study... which will show up in every google search for the "Star Wars Kid", forever linking his new life to that old one.
It's quite disappointing to see that his address, email, phone number, and the name of his friends and girlfriend (if any) are missing. Can we all have that too please, so that it's easier to ruin the rest of his life too? :-)
seriously, that dude needs to be medicated with horse tranquilizers and stuck in a padded room without internet access. Solving the software problem? Fuck, it's pushing 5 years and he hasn't managed to build a gui front end for libvorbis. Oh, but he's not a programmer (no shit), he's a debugger. A super debugger. He can find bugs merely by looking at source code. Ooh, so can I, so can any competent programmer. That's the whole point of code reviews, that's why there's a phrase: "many eyes make bugs shallow". Except we don't consider baseline competence to be some sort of God-like feat.
that is HILARIOUS!
... he’s putting his litigious experience to some use, getting his law degree at McGill University in Montreal.
So, he went to the Darkside.
See what happens when you bully kids?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I don't think he's alone when they say that the worst years of my life were, in fact, high school. Cliques full of assholes and status seeking social climbing butterflies pretty much achieved status by picking on people like me. I actually found the group of punks (smoking, piercings, tattoos, apathy, loud music, etc) to be the most welcoming group of people despite my lack of smoking, the fact that I listened to The Beatles and watched X-Files. The only people that seemed to really thrive in that crap were the popular kids and college was a welcomed change. I went from having four or five close friends in high school to entire crowds of people that I loved to talk to.
...
Having been made fun of for reading Star Wars books in grade school, I sympathize with this kid though my pain was not on a global level like his. Still, I bet if you asked him now if he could go back and do things differently it would probably be better not to sue and instead milk that fifteen minutes by going on SNL or Conan O'Brien or even trying for a cameo in one of the Wayans Brothers' parody comedy flicks. Jesus, I bet he could make good money if he charged $5,000 per video and set up a site where he recorded himself doing his spiel and saying "Happy Birthday <insert your name here>" or "I only twirl around like a moron when I'm eating my <insert your food product here>!" And then just kept rerecording himself doing that. You might as well milk it and have fun with it
Anybody know how Daniel Tosh gets around these potential lawsuits when he displays videos on Comedy Central in his show Tosh.0? I mean, I'm sure he gets permission first or it comes from a country with lax copyright laws but what kind of logic do they pitch to the guys that do just outrageously stupid things? "You did something stupid by starting a gasoline can on fire but you have the chance to do something smart and let me show it?"
My work here is dung.
Does anyone know his midiclorian count?
Mother of God no! We DONT need Boxxy at all. Let the the btards have her.
I'm glad he's doing fine. I'm sure 99% of the nerdocracy wish him well. Especially from me since I made a SW kid video.
Good luck to him, but now we should leave him alone.
At this point, being where "Star Wars Kid" happened IS the cultural heritage of Trois-Rivières. I mean I'm sure other important cultural things have happened there, but all of them pale in comparison.
There should be a monument at the location, along with informative kiosks and a mini-theater playing the video. You should be able to buy replica golf sabers, pose for pictures with cardboard cutouts of Ghyslain, and get to film yourself in the same room...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Sure, he was a nerdy kid, but the reality is nerdy kids typically make the most money after they get older. After-all, most are relatively intelligent, and most are going to go on to college. The attributes that draw ire from your high school peers are what often translate very well into sucess in a career.
The high school girls are all swooning over that guy on the football team with a letter jacket. The 20-something girls though are swooning over the guy with the party-boat down at the marina.
Get laid more as a teenager or more when you're in you're 30's. Kind of a trade-off really.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
This guy is no different than Steve Bartman who made a mistake as a fan that could have been anybody. He was chastised, ridiculed and pretty much couldn't return to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs ever again. One ESPN writer did hunt him down a few years later.
What's sad is that in the day and age where Napoleon Dynamite is a big selling movie and cool, he's only ironically cool and for anyone who actually does do something in real life that's funny or etc. they get bullied forever and there appear to be no consequences for the bullies.
stuff |
The best was when The Venture Bros. did a take on The Star Wars kid in their episode "Tag Sale" in their first season; pretty much the all-around best episode ever to showcase the show concept, right next to the one with Race Bannon.
[Paul Harvey] ... and now you know... the rest of the story. [/Paul Harvey]
Who is the forty year old accountant in the picture? Is that what early 20-something men look like these days?
The slider to adjust the comment threshold is ALWAYS broken for IDLE. Works fine for other /. stories, just not for IDLE. Whoever is in charge of IDLE needs to be fired.
Who knew... Joaquin Phoenix was the Star Wars kid.
Learn something new every day.
The worst thing about lawyers is that some eventually become politicians, creating unnecessarily complex laws that require yet more lawyers to navigate (no conflict-of-interest there).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
This has been going on nearly a full year now. idle is 100% unusable because you lazy fucks refuse to EVER fix the styles on this site.
Why launch a new section if your users can't even, well, use it ?
The Jedi are bound to a code of morality and justice and are trained in the use of the light side of the force but not the Dark side.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no death, there is the Force.
Jedi are the guardians of peace in the galaxy.
Jedi use their powers to defend and to protect.
Jedi respect all life, in any form.
Jedi serve others rather than ruling over them, for the good of the galaxy.
Jedi seek to improve themselves through knowledge and training.
If all of that doesn't describe a Lawyer I am not sure what does. Try to keep in mind people that not all (in fact only a very small but highly visible) lawyers are ambulance chasing souless bastards, or greedy corporate shills. Most try to uphold the law as best they can and protect people. I have a bias in that my Dads a lawyer I suppose. However just like Jedi, there are both the dark and the light side of the force. I suppose some lawyers are very Sith like to be sure.
The major reason this guy was made fun of was that he was morbidly obese and was jumping around displaying the lack of coordination that obesity causes. The real triumph here is that he now seems to be at a healthy weight. I would argue that in our society, this is almost more important than becoming a lawyer. This is the whole reason that a picture is included.
Lawyers earn their money from conflicts. Often they will recommend to file suit, even when the case is weak. It matters little to them if you lose, and anyways you can get most of the money from insurance, for a little while.
The worst decisions for a case you can get from lawyers. They can pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, but you must decide yourself. A case is a big drain on your social life and well-beigness. Some ruthless people thrive on the system, but for most of us, it will be a very bad experience. Be very careful if the benefits / principle outweights the REAL risks and drain on your life for the next 2-5 years..
...that everybody laughed their asses off at this kid?
Granted, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention at the time - pretty much watched the video once, laughed, and then moved on with my life - but I don't remember "multiple thousands of geeks [coming] immediately to his defense." I DO remember hearing that he was suing over it, and thinking, "Yikes, that's a bit overboard, isn't it? Gotta learn to roll with the punches." Clearly he had some deep-seated psychological issues beyond those that come from being made fun of for being a "geek."
I'm just surprised to hear so many people making "supportive" comments when you almost definitely laughed at him 8 years ago - just like everyone else. Feeling guilty, much?
I thought his acting was quite good once the special effects were added.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJOVPjhXMY
Finally, someone worthy of carrying on the torch of totally confusing the jury!
If you believe that even half of your troll is true, you're an idiot.
If he didn't post the video to make us laugh, why did he post it? To show off his awesome light-saber skills? Hahahahaha
There is a way to laugh and poke fun of someone without ripping them to shreds. However, you have to realize that those who rip you to shreds are just assholes compensating for their own problems.
if you didn't commit a crime then I fail to see how a lawyer saved your ass, perhaps not commiting the crime saved your ass? That's why I always turn down kool-aid from a lawyer.
Nah, man, he'll go straight to busting out the lightsaber moves in the courtroom.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Loser Lawyer Litigates, Laughs Last!
Bulky Barrister Born By Bullies!
Saber-Swinging Super-Star Supervises Saving Society!
Crazy Counsel Courts Conservationists!
Activist Attorney Accepts Arguable Acclaim!
Famed Flabby Fanboy Fixes Fate, Flaunts Fellowship!
+0 Meh
Hopefully sooner than later. bye.
to make him semi famous again. Maybe somebody will start making fun of him again.
I bet he'll be using the Chewbacca defense a lot!
I love this video, it is so sad it caused him harm. good to know where how he's doing now.
Ultimate proof he's turned to the dark side.
=)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
However, his video was seen 1 billion times and multiple thousands of geeks came immediately to his defense
Were they sporting fantasy armor and elaborate fake swords, or did they merely stand defiantly with arms crossed in what was supposed to be perceived as a menacing manner, armed with nothing but a shallow perspective and a narrow sense of humor?
The evil is that they have a closed shop which requires me to employ them to navigate the entirely artificial world which is law, in order to do what is reasonable.
My neighbour plants a hedge on my land. I want to dig it up. Maybe we would fight. Who knows, but we could sort it out one way or another. Instead, I am forced to pay a lawyer. My neighbour is forced to pay a lawyer. In the end, the hedge is either still there or it has to be removed. There is no common sense to it. If there were we could predict the outcome ourselves and dispense with the lawyers and judge and the huge expense.
Lawyers are leeches who we pay to advise us on matters where they claim expertise but where we have no redress when their advice proves worthless because the judge decided otherwise.
I thought that was a picture of Joachim Phoenix and that maybe he had gotten released from hip hop rehab.
he has now mastered the Chewbacca Defense
*DrugCheese rants*