'Star Wars Kid' cuts a deal with his tormentors

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-04-07 08:05pm

TROIS-RIVIÈRES, QUE. — As Ghyslain Raza recalled, whenever he walked by his high school's common areas, other students would jump on tables and chant, "Star Wars Kid! Star Wars Kid!"

There would be a commotion as they shouted and poked at him, trying to get a reaction. "It was simply unbearable," he said.

An otherwise ordinary teen in this Quebec small town, Mr. Raza had become a worldwide object of ridicule when schoolmates put on the Internet a video of him clumsily pretending to be a Star Wars character.

Three years later, Mr. Raza and his parents this week reached an out-of-court settlement with the families of three former schoolmates they had sued for $351,000 in damages.

The settlement annuls a civil trial set to begin on Monday that would have scrutinized one of the world's first and most-publicized cases of cyber-bullying.

However, documents filed in the case at the Trois-Rivières courthouse give new details about how a mean-spirited high-school prank turned into a global Internet cause célèbre.

Specifics of the settlement remain confidential.

Lawyers for the three schoolmates had suffered a setback after they were not allowed to introduce as evidence a transcript of a phone conversation Mr. Raza had with a blogger, Jishnu Mukerji.

The blogger had posted a transcript of the exchange on the Internet.

Conducted a month after the video and parodies of it began circulating, the conversation has Mr. Raza calling the spoofs "interesting" but not expressing much distress.

However, a judge rejected a bid to table a transcript of the chat and Mr. Mukerji was not available to testify.

The documents include transcripts of examinations under oath of Mr. Raza and of three students accused of circulating the video, Michaël Caron, Jérôme Laflamme and Jean-Michel Rheault.

(Proceedings against a fourth, François Labarre, were dropped after Mr. Raza acknowledged that the allegations against that student were based on hearsay.)

In the transcripts, Mr. Raza said the experience left him unable to attend school.

"It was simply unbearable, totally. It was impossible to attend class," Mr. Raza said.

He said the situation left him feeling drained of energy, and that he let himself go and no longer lifted weights to keep fit.

He said he was diagnosed with depression by a pedopsychiatrist at Montreal's Sainte-Justine Hospital and his lawyers, in their fillings, said they wanted to have a psychiatrist and a psychologist testify, along with producing his medical file.

Under questioning, Mr. Laflamme and Mr. Rheault conceded their role in spreading a video that Mr. Raza, then 15, had made of himself and left on a shelf in the school TV studio.

Mr. Laflamme said he discovered the tape in April of 2003, when he took school equipment to film a varsity football game.

He showed the tape to Mr. Rheault, who made a copy of it.

"I thought it'd be an interesting prank . . . I wanted Ghyslain to know what I knew of him, what I had seen," Mr. Laflamme said.

"All I did was take the cassette, digitize it on the studio computer to pull a joke on Ghyslain. After that, I had nothing to do with it," Mr. Rheault said he later told the school principal after the controversy erupted.

He said that when a school counsellor confronted him about Mr. Raza's misfortunes, he replied, "It's no fun what happened here, but that's the problem with the Internet. Things travel fast."

Mr. Caron, who says he didn't even know the two other pranksters, said in examination that as the tape was being e-mailed among students, he created a website and posted the video on it.

According to court filings, the video first appeared on the Internet on the evening of April 14, 2003.

About a month later, one U.S. Web blog that had posted the video said it had been downloaded 1.1 million times already.

Mr. Raza's lawyer said in a court filing that the video was so widely circulated that one Internet site solely dedicated to the two-minute clip recorded 76 million visits by October, 2004.

Mr. Raza conceded in his examination that he didn't express much anguish when he spoke to Mr. Mukerji in May of 2003 about his sudden fame.

He said he was cautious because "everything I said was textually reported on the Internet. I signalled in more or less subtle fashion my unhappiness."

Mr. Raza -- who appears on the video as a chubby, ungainly young man -- recalled how other students got on tables and chanted taunts at him. "There was about 100 people in those halls. It was total chaos . . . Any opportunity was good enough to shout 'Star Wars!' "

He said in one class, where a document was shown through a projector, other students scrolled the text, mimicking the opening of the movie, as they sang the Star Wars theme.

And whenever he was in a public place, he said, strangers would call to him.

"Hey! It's Ghyslain Raza! Star Wars Kid, hey!"

He left the school and eventually, got a private tutor.

No one would comment yesterday about the settlement, including whether it included monetary compensation.

However, previous proceedings in the case had included discussions about whether the families of the three defendants had liability insurance.

The families of the three defendants have varying financial situations, court documents suggest. Mr. Caron's court filings include a letter from an insurer refusing to provide liability insurance coverage, whereas Mr. Laflamme says in his examination that his father had savings of $500,000 from an inheritance.

Poor kid. How would you like it if a video of something embarrassing you did when you were young got on to the internet?

Pick · Post by **Pick** » 2006-04-07 08:10pm

This is actually a "mental anguish" case I agree with. Even amidst a tiny group of friends, this kind of thing is terribly humiliating to people. With the whole internet aware and laughing? With it ridiculed on TV (such as American Dad)? Holy hell. As funny as it was, this was a prank that really hurt somebody --and not for anything particularly egregious on his part.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-04-07 08:11pm

If something embarassing from when I was a kid was on the net, I'd kick my brother's ass. Seriously... although I'd get him back, too.

As for this kid, I can't help but feel sorry for him. Why are people so pathetic as to continually mock a kid for something he did a while back? It's really pathetic, but I guess that's how us dumbshit highschoolers are. Fucking idiots..

Lonestar · Post by **Lonestar** » 2006-04-07 08:34pm

Pick wrote:This is actually a "mental anguish" case I agree with. Even amidst a tiny group of friends, this kind of thing is terribly humiliating to people. With the whole internet aware and laughing? With it ridiculed on TV (such as American Dad)? Holy hell. As funny as it was, this was a prank that really hurt somebody --and not for anything particularly egregious on his part.

It was also on Arrested Devolpment, although they had the son be "The Star Wars kid".

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2006-04-07 08:39pm

*sigh*

Off to N&P.....grrr.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-04-07 08:54pm

Pick wrote:This is actually a "mental anguish" case I agree with. Even amidst a tiny group of friends, this kind of thing is terribly humiliating to people. With the whole internet aware and laughing? With it ridiculed on TV (such as American Dad)? Holy hell. As funny as it was, this was a prank that really hurt somebody --and not for anything particularly egregious on his part.

Are you kidding me? You can't buy that sort of status. With all the stuff that happened to him, like world wide internet cult status, a huge out of court settlement, major TV shows lampooning it, companies buying him shit, and at the very least, his entire high school knowing who he is when they probably didn't even see him before, he should be kissing the feet of the kids who published that video and offering them a cut. It's enough that I want to borrow a webcam and prance about in my tighty whiteys with a broomstick going "Whirr.... whirr..." and hope I get a fraction of the attention this kid got.

Any "mental anguish" on himself was caused because instead of using this to his avantage and making himself a legend, he decided to cry about it and start the ligitating. Boo hoo, I'm sorry he became a de facto minor celebrity and that still gets an occasional joke made about him when if it didn't happen, no one would have noticed his ass at all.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-07 09:15pm

So you think that any publicity's good publicity? I wouldn't want to be known as an idiot. Famous != infamous.

Not everybody has as thick a skin as you Gil and I don't think it's fair to expect everybody to have a skin thick enough to take constant reminder of one's own mental problems. From that news article it sounds like everywhere the kid walked he was ridiculed.

Brian

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-04-07 09:21pm

Didn't they already buy him an iPod and give him a bunch of money?

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-04-07 09:33pm

brianeyci wrote:So you think that any publicity's good publicity? I wouldn't want to be known as an idiot. Famous != infamous.

Not everybody has as thick a skin as you Gil and I don't think it's fair to expect everybody to have a skin thick enough to take constant reminder of one's own mental problems. From that news article it sounds like everywhere the kid walked he was ridiculed.

That's the thing. All publicity can be spun to be good publicity. You get an embarrassing video released of you prancing around like a faerie in high school? Take a bow. Sure it's embarrassing, but life in general is embarrassing and humiliating, doubly so in high school. You're awkward, you're changing, and human biology is playing a hilarious* prank on you that makes you break out in zits, patches of hair, and a voice that breaks at the worst possible moment during a time when people are by far the most superficial.

*Hilarious as a kick in the nuts.

If you treat it like the end of the world, it becomes the end of the world, you know? All you can do is grin and show everyone that it doesn't bother you. Hell, make a sequel if you have to that is twice as cheesy. Be the best damn StarWars Kid on the planet. I will bet a hundred green backs right now that half the reason he was ridiculed so much was because he made such a huge stink about it and was suing people over it. If he had owned it, people wouldn't have ridiculed him nearly so much.

I guess that's why I don't have so much sympathy for his "mental anguish". He got the spotlight thrown on him and he didn't do anything by cry and litigate. He came out of this whole thing like a fat rat and now has a bit of popular culture that belongs to him, something that will never happen to any of us, and we are supposed to feel sorry for him? I can't do it. I'm just up to my eyeballs in envy that I wasn't the one who inadvertantly had a fruity little video released about me.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-07 09:39pm

He didn't just give up and die. He could probably just drop out of school and do nothing with all his money but he got a tutor. I wouldn't be able to study in an environment where people pointed at me randomly and yelled out something... not just one person, but a hundred people, getting on tables. And it sounds like it happened every day.

I would rather that not happen to me than to get an ipod and a lot of money.

Brian

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-04-07 09:42pm

And you couldn't just wave to the crowd and find something clever to say? Turn the embarrassment into a stunt? Own the StarWars Kidness?

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » 2006-04-07 09:45pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:I will bet a hundred green backs right now that half the reason he was ridiculed so much was because he made such a huge stink about it and was suing people over it. If he had owned it, people wouldn't have ridiculed him nearly so much.

I wouldn't be so sure. I never followed the kid much besides seeing the videos once and had no idea he was suing over it, nor did any of my friends, to the best of knowledge and I'll bet that most other people didn't either.

Gil Hamilton wrote: now has a bit of popular culture that belongs to him, something that will never happen to any of us, and we are supposed to feel sorry for him?

It kind of happened to me, I'm in Numa Numa for a brief moment. It got pretty irksome, and mostly all I got was people occasionally coming up and asking me stuff like, "Are you that guy in Numa? You are! That's cool. So how do you know Gary..." etc. I know Gary (the creator of Numa Numa) hated all the fame and pretty much everyone had a positive view of the video, unlike Star Wars Kid, that I'm sure plenty of people made fun of. So yeah, I can feel sorry for him.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-04-07 09:47pm

Of course I would, I would probably relish the chance... I'd probably have a dozen canned witty responses and if someone screamed "Star Wars Kid" I'd probably say "That's right I have a lot of money" or "I know I'm great" or something, but eventually that gets tiring for some people (it would for me). He sounds like an introvert, someone who values his privacy, and that much attention could have been a challenge to deal with on a physical and emotional level. At least the courts agree. So I can feel sorry for him.

Brian

Pick · Post by **Pick** » 2006-04-07 10:33pm

Not everyone likes the limelight to begin with. And no, you can't just "magically" make ridicule fun or exciting. That's like your mom saying "Well, honey, remember --sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me!" Having every day spent ridiculed for what really was a pretty dorky endeavor would have to be stressful, especially if you're not the kind of person who is regularly the center of attention. Additionally, there's only so many snappy comebacks (for those who can even manage them) that can completely glaze over the fact that he's on tape around the entire Internet acting like a fucking retard. Probably most of the comments one could make would be jumping into self-depreciation.

Besides, he wasn't asking for it. It's not like this kid even posted the thing himself. That would be a separate case entirely. He had this thrust upon him for nothing more than taping himself in privacy for fun and having some assholes find and distribute it.

Kazuaki Shimazaki · Post by **Kazuaki Shimazaki** » 2006-04-07 10:43pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:Are you kidding me? You can't buy that sort of status. With all the stuff that happened to him, like world wide internet cult status, a huge out of court settlement, major TV shows lampooning it, companies buying him shit, and at the very least, his entire high school knowing who he is when they probably didn't even see him before, he should be kissing the feet of the kids who published that video and offering them a cut. It's enough that I want to borrow a webcam and prance about in my tighty whiteys with a broomstick going "Whirr.... whirr..." and hope I get a fraction of the attention this kid got.

Nice of you to be an extrovert. For us introverts the decision isn't that clear-cut. Even for you, one day after awhile of this, you may get tired of all this "celebrity". Problem is, when you get tired, you can't stop, and then it gets painful.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-04-07 11:22pm

Kazuaki Shimazaki wrote:Nice of you to be an extrovert. For us introverts the decision isn't that clear-cut. Even for you, one day after awhile of this, you may get tired of all this "celebrity". Problem is, when you get tired, you can't stop, and then it gets painful.

Believe me, I'm no extrovert, but I know what you've got to do to turn lemons to lemonade. He didn't ask for it and it wasn't fair, it was embarrassing, but in situations like that, what can you do but laugh and take a bow? I suppose sue everyone and cry about it, while reaping tremendous benefit in exchange for "mental anguish".

Pick wrote:Not everyone likes the limelight to begin with. And no, you can't just "magically" make ridicule fun or exciting. That's like your mom saying "Well, honey, remember --sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me!" Having every day spent ridiculed for what really was a pretty dorky endeavor would have to be stressful, especially if you're not the kind of person who is regularly the center of attention. Additionally, there's only so many snappy comebacks (for those who can even manage them) that can completely glaze over the fact that he's on tape around the entire Internet acting like a fucking retard. Probably most of the comments one could make would be jumping into self-depreciation.

Why can't you? Practically all our humor is based around people getting into embarrassing situations. At that point, you are in the limelight, so why not be the best damn StarWars Kid you can be? People act like complete retards all the time. My time in high school was filled people who got into hideously embarrassing situations. The difference between being made fun of or not is whether you can laugh at yourself. People respect that, even if they think you are a dork. However, if you handle the situation by going "What are you all looking at? I'll fucking sue you all!", they are going to ride your ass about it as long as they can get a rise out of you, because they aren't making fun of your stunt any more, they are making fun of you for being a crybaby about it. If you pull that plank in the first place, by laughing at yourself and owning the situation, even if it isn't your fault, they can't get you for being a poor sport.

Besides, he wasn't asking for it. It's not like this kid even posted the thing himself. That would be a separate case entirely. He had this thrust upon him for nothing more than taping himself in privacy for fun and having some assholes find and distribute it.

Who cares? It doesn't matter if he posted it or someone else did, that is irrelevant to the fact that it is out there. At that point, why not own the situation and make it yours? You can't stop it from being out there, why not have fun with it?

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-04-07 11:23pm

Ghetto edit: Can I get a quote fix there? Thanks.

mr friendly guy · Post by **mr friendly guy** » 2006-04-07 11:45pm

I wonder what those tormentors face would look like after their parents announced they cost them more than $350 K combined.

They can just suck it down hard. Bullying is not a humourous thing and it wears thin after a while. People are entitled to human dignity. This take it like a man BS doesn't cut it, and I suspect those who advocate it never had to take so much abuse in the first place.

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2006-04-08 01:13am

Whats he going to do when he grows up and goes out into the real world, where people say much more offensive things to one another than "Hey, its the Star Wars Kid!"

Flakin · Post by **Flakin** » 2006-04-08 01:41am

Personally, I'm glad to hear that this has been settled. Back when the video first appeared I contributed from www.jish.nu (now closed) to get Ghyslain an iPod.

It was one of those thing I found unsettlingly amusing, one of those "There but for the grace of (Deity here)" moments that I recalled not fondly from my own geeky, tubby childhood. I was happy to give money to getting him something nice for his unwanted fame.

Gil, not everyone is capable of blowing something off like you say he should. From the accounts of the trouble the admins at jish.nu had even giving Ghyslain his gift we'd saved for, he just sounded like a terribly shy, introverted, picked on kid who didn't want the infamy that had been thrust upon him in any shape or form.

Also, there were published IRC chatlogs of the kids who'd released the inital video talking about ways they could impersonate Ghyslain and get their hands on the fund that had been made for him. I hope that they have to pay back every dollar to him that they settled on, without any interference from their parents. Assholes.

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2006-04-08 04:36am

Flakin wrote:Gil, not everyone is capable of blowing something off like you say he should.

And how do you suppose he'll survive in the REAL WORLD?

If he's so interoverted and weak willed that "Hey, Star Wars Kid!" crushes his little fragile ego then i truly do feel sympathy for him. He'll need every penny of that money cause he'll never be able to hold a job where there are other human beings.

Tiriol · Post by **Tiriol** » 2006-04-08 05:19am

18-Till-I-Die wrote:
Flakin wrote:Gil, not everyone is capable of blowing something off like you say he should.
And how do you suppose he'll survive in the REAL WORLD?

If he's so interoverted and weak willed that "Hey, Star Wars Kid!" crushes his little fragile ego then i truly do feel sympathy for him. He'll need every penny of that money cause he'll never be able to hold a job where there are other human beings.

I'm not sure if that's the case. While I haven't seen the video in question, the very idea of having hundreds of people constantly point at me and say "Hey! Star Wars Kid!" is not something I'd be happy with. And if the OP is correct, that has continued for some time and just about everywhere. It's not the fact that people call him that name - it's the fact that nearly everyone calls him by that name, not just his co-workers, as it could be in the case of work environment when he has reached adulthood. I might be wrong, but I do see a difference there.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-04-08 05:22am

18-Till-I-Die wrote:
Flakin wrote:Gil, not everyone is capable of blowing something off like you say he should.
And how do you suppose he'll survive in the REAL WORLD?

If he's so interoverted and weak willed that "Hey, Star Wars Kid!" crushes his little fragile ego then i truly do feel sympathy for him. He'll need every penny of that money cause he'll never be able to hold a job where there are other human beings.

Where I work, nearly every co-worker has been nothing but courteous and respectful to me. Hell, I work in a high school, and the fucking high school students don't even give me much shit.

Now I realize that that isn't necessarily the case everywhere, but it is possible to find places where people do not regularly publicly humiliate you. Hell, haven't you ever heard the phrase "hostile work environment"?

Can you even give examples of such humiliation that regularly takes place in your "real world"? Please, do tell me of circumstances which are worse than "whenever he walked by his high school's common areas, other students would jump on tables and chant, "Star Wars Kid! Star Wars Kid!" "

I guess that's why I don't have so much sympathy for his "mental anguish". He got the spotlight thrown on him and he didn't do anything by cry and litigate. He came out of this whole thing like a fat rat and now has a bit of popular culture that belongs to him, something that will never happen to any of us, and we are supposed to feel sorry for him? I can't do it. I'm just up to my eyeballs in envy that I wasn't the one who inadvertantly had a fruity little video released about me.

Boo hoo, I'm sorry he became a de facto minor celebrity and that still gets an occasional joke made about him when if it didn't happen, no one would have noticed his ass at all.

There are people that simply don't tolerate humiliation and shame very well at all. Are you seriously suggesting that they should change their very personalities overnight, that such a thing is even possible for most people? Are you really suggesting that to feel genuine humiliation and shame and be hurt by it is fundamentally wrong?

Some people aren't so desperate for attention that they'll happily accept negative attention, and you're either a huge dumbass or a huge jackass for not realizing that there are people out there with radically different personalities than your own.

Pezzoni · Post by **Pezzoni** » 2006-04-08 05:50am

18-Till-I-Die wrote:If he's so interoverted and weak willed that "Hey, Star Wars Kid!" crushes his little fragile ego then i truly do feel sympathy for him. He'll need every penny of that money cause he'll never be able to hold a job where there are other human beings.

This wasn't just the odd person, this was hundereds of kids jumping on fucking tables shouting it, by the sounds of things.
I think most people would be pretty upset by being constantly ridiculed and derided by the whole school, and indeed many people outside of it.

Crazy_Vasey · Post by **Crazy_Vasey** » 2006-04-08 05:53am

18-Till-I-Die wrote:
Flakin wrote:Gil, not everyone is capable of blowing something off like you say he should.
And how do you suppose he'll survive in the REAL WORLD?

If he's so interoverted and weak willed that "Hey, Star Wars Kid!" crushes his little fragile ego then i truly do feel sympathy for him. He'll need every penny of that money cause he'll never be able to hold a job where there are other human beings.

In the real world he won't have hundreds of bratty kids pointing and jeering at him and he'll be a lot older and a lot more able to deal with the idiots of the world that still do. He probably won't even be recognisable as the Star Wars Kid by the time he's old enough to enter the workforce anyway. I know I look a hell of a lot different from how I did when I was twelve or thirteen.