The Star Wars Kid is Ghyslain Raza, a portly 15-year-old in November 2002 when he videotaped himself imitating Jedi moves with an ersatz Darth Maul-style lightsaber. Unfortunately, that footage was on the same tape as a class project, and that tape was in a camcorder stored in a class at the private Séminaire Saint-Joseph school in Trois Rivières, Quebec.

Some classmates stole it.

Four teens-- Michael Caron, Francois René Labarre, Jérôme Laflamme, and Jean-Michel Rheault-- digitized the material and put it on the World Wide Web in 2003, with an invitation to add humorous commentary. The footage found a receptive audience, and its reluctant star found himself dubbed the Star Wars Kid. Other sites copied the material, often adding sound effects (such as flatulence), insulting titles (such as Dork Lord), and captions. By the summer of 2003, millions of people had viewed the material (The Globe and Mail July 23 2003 A2).

The Star Wars Kid has also received sympathetic responses; one online group raised money and bought him an Apple iPod. Others established an online petition asking that George Lucas give the Kid a cameo role in Revenge of the Sith. While this did not succeed, in 2004 the Kid's unlicensed likeness appeared in the game Tony Hawk Underground 2. Parodies and allusions to the sequence have appeared in a number of media sources.

The videotape's young star left school amidst widespread mockery and has received psychiatric treatment. His family has launched a lawsuit against the families of the four teenagers responsible, claiming they maliciously made the boy a laughingstock. Entered into evidence are several of their online chats, which demonstrate a general lack of remorse and an apparent plot to acquire the boy's iPod. In April of 2005, the week before the civil trial would have started, the parties reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount.

One could argue that the boy over-reacted, or that his parents' lawsuit only further exposed him to abuse. Whatever opinion one holds, the Star Wars Kid serves as another reminder that the Internet has changed the nature of everything, including adolescent cruelty and humiliation.