In lieu of a photo of Ghyslain Raza, here's the Star Wars logo.
Gawker reported today on an interview with Ghyslain Raza, better known as the “Star Wars Kid,” that appeared in L’actualité, a French-Canadian publication in Quebec (the original interview is in French, so we are reporting from other sources). To give a little backstory, the infamous “Star Wars Kid” video was created when Mr. Raza filmed himself swinging a golf ball retriever around like a lightsaber, complete with sound effects he verbalized himself. The film was recorded at his school, and it was uploaded onto the Internet when his classmates found the tape. It soon went viral, and it was when Mr. Raza became known as the Star Wars Kid.
For the sake of Mr. Raza’s privacy, we have opted to not show an image or clip of the video here. Nearly two months ago, we also deleted our own page on the Star Wars Kid for that same reason. Those reasons will be made more clear as this article goes on.
In his first interview, Mr. Raza spoke about how the viral video came about. He said that he was part of his school's television club. While he was alone in the studio one evening, he "practiced the choreography...Most 14-year-old-boys would do something similar in that situation, maybe more graceful, but I was goofing around." He ended up leaving the tape he recorded on a shelf without any thought about hiding it. After all, "Who would take the trouble to watch it?"
The rest was history.
Mr. Raza said that the bullying and cyberbullying he received as a result was so mean-spirited and cruel that people were telling him to kill himself. It got so bad that he had to quit school and be treated for severe depression. Mr. Raza said, "No matter how hard I tried to ignore people telling me to commit suicide, I couldn't help but feel worthless, like my life wasn't worth living."
As time went on, Mr. Raza was able to overcome, and he even went back to school the next year (albeit a different one). He now has a law degree from McGill University, and he chose to give this first interview in the hopes of helping other cyberbullying victims overcome their own obstacles.
I’m someone who is concerned about the influence of cyberbullying on today’s youth, so I’m very happy to see Mr. Raza speak out about his experience. It’s my hope, as it is his, that he’s able to help others overcome their own bad experiences on and offline.
You can read the full (French language) interview on L’actualité.