Slashdot Mirror
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? :-)
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.