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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."
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? :-)
I was (and am) one of the "punk" group. Long hair, beard, listening to metal, playing guitar in various bands. I was (and am) also a geek/nerd, but I was protected from being picked on by being more obviously in the first group than in the latter group. I tried to step in whenever I saw the "popular kids" picking on what they thought was an easy target, just because it was (according to them) the cool thing to do. I'm still friends with a lot of those other nerds/geeks, and some of the punks. I don't even REMEMBER the "popular kids".
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.
"Do you know who Marcel Proust is? French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that." -Frank, Little Miss Sunshine
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually, I was in a frat and found it quite welcoming (and a valuable social experience). Not all frats are a bunch of super-douchebags or the equivalent of the Betas in Revenge of the Nerds, you know. Actually, it was my experience that most of the anti-frat types were WAY more snobbish and bigoted than most of the fraternities themselves ever were.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
For myself, Junior High School was by far and away the worst for bullying. By the time I got into High School, most of the idiots and creeps that were picking on me had either moved along to other things, dropped out, or found other targets. There were still some idiots that tried to do stupid stuff, but I eventually got over it.
My parents also helped here, as they also got the local police involved and had a uniformed police officer talk to some of these creeps that were after me. One of the kids (I think seriously) didn't know that beating the crap out of a kid was illegal and that spending time in jail was a likely outcome from that kind of behavior. The verbal abuse I can generally handle, but some of the physical abuse I got at the hands of some of these idiots is something that I still have scars from decades later. My mother (and now my wife too) says it gives me "character". Yeah, right! A couple of my broken bones never really did heal.
On the "positive" side, one of the big bullies that went after me also made the mistake of driving a stolen car with a huge stash of "controlled substances"... and spent twenty years (that I know of) in the state prison system. Somehow I found that to be very satisfying when I found out. He stole the car at the age of 18, so essentially threw away his life and didn't even graduate from high school unless he somehow finished in prison.
I absolutely agree. You can't whitewash all lawyers as blood suckers just because most of them are. After all, like the joke goes, 99 percent of the lawyers give 1 percent of the lawyers a bad name. But let's look at this a bit more realistically.
The worst of the worst of the lawyers are the ones WE elect to make the laws and run the legal system that is their life blood. Does anyone really believe that lawyers are primarily concerned with the common good as opposed to what is good for their profession/friends/contributors? Your NEED for lawyers would be dramatically reduced if lawyers were not running things. So why do we keep electing these bozos?
Lastly, plaintiffs might be the ones that sue, but it is the lawyers by far and large that take home the booty. If they are the primary beneficiaries of a system they as a profession construct, maintain, run, and profit by, then why blame the plaintiffs? The plaintiffs often suffer nearly as much at the hands of the system as the defendants.
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.
At the risk of sounding sentimental, what keeps me coming back to slashdot is the people. Granted, lots of new folks keep showing up here, but they tend to leave for more popular sites like Digg and Reddit. I'm fine with that; the Eternal September can just roll on by.
I'm not in as much of a hurry as I once was, and a day or two isn't going to kill me. Plus, time does wonders for weeding out the interesting from the merely sensational. This story might not be the best example of that, but even when it's not "stuff that matters," if it is somehow related to nerds and we've had a few days to hear and think about it, then the discussion here is likely to be more insightful.
Or not. :-)
Either way, it's nice to come by here and see some long-standing friends whom I've never met personally. Whether the discussion of the day is logical disourse, blatant fanboyism, heated rhetoric, well-earned snarkery, complaining about editors, or just lighthearted BS about whatever rabbit trail we've found ourselves on, I know I am in for an enjoyable time.
So sit back, read, laugh, be challenged, challenge someone else, troll if you must, meme if you can, respect your elders, respect your youngsters, relax and have a good time.