Time.com listed JediMaster.net as one of the 50 Best Websites
for 2003. The site had been up for 18 days.
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The Star Wars Kid was just goofing off at school.
Now he finds his private performance downloaded by Internet users across the
world.
The Star Wars Kid is a 15-year-old from Quebec known
only as Ghyslain -- his parents are keeping his last name secret to protect his
identity. Back in November 2002, Ghyslain was goofing off at a school video
studio and recorded himself fighting a mock battle with a broomstick lightsaber.
Over two minutes, the video shows the lone, overweight teenager twirling his
mock lightsaber ever faster while making his own accompanying sound effects.
Yes, we've all had our dorky, private moments, but
this poor kid is living the nightmare of having his private dorkiness projected
across the world to giggling Web users. His friends found the tape, and uploaded
it to KaZaA as a joke on April 19. Within two weeks, someone had added full Star
Wars special effects and noises to the tape, and the video was linked on
gaming, technology, and Star Wars-related sites across the Internet.
Currently There Are 38 Clone Videos.
3 more in the making!
Ghyslain - The Star Wars Kid
Every teenager does something they live to regret.
It's part and parcel of adolescence. A 15-year-old Quebec boy named
Ghyslain simply made the additional mistake of recording his moment of
infamy on video. And now he's an Internet sensation.
Ghyslain, whose parents requested that his last name be withheld, is
the so-called “Star Wars Kid” featured in a hilarious but oddly
poignant video that has been downloaded more than a million times since
its release to the Web in late April. In the clip, Ghyslain brandishes a
golf ball retriever that serves as a double-bladed light saber,
enthusiastically re-enacting a series of battle maneuvers inspired by the
feats of evildoer Darth Maul in “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom
Menace.” When a group of schoolmates discovered the videotape, they put
it on the Internet, and within days it was a cause celebré.
The Ghyslain clip soon caught the attention of Web bloggers Andy Baio
and Jish Mukerji, who posted it to their respective sites. Its obvious
comedic appeal aside, Baio recognized in Ghyslain a kindred spirit. “I'm
a computer programmer, and I was unpopular in high school, except for some
like-minded, geeky friends,” Baio said. “Yes, he looks silly and
awkward. But at the second level, you just identify so much.”
Visitors to Baio's site, www.waxy.org,
began posting comments on the video — not all of them civil.
“Some of the comments were really positive. People were writing
things like, ‘I was like him in high school,’” Baio said. “But a
lot of them — a disturbing number — were incredibly mean-spirited. It
made me mad. All of these people calling him ‘fat-ass’ or ‘loser,’
and it's completely hypocritical — I mean, all the traffic was coming
from technology sites, videogame sites, and ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star
Trek’ sites.
“So I turned off the comment function, deleted the negative comments
and posted a message to the effect that ‘You're trashing one of your
own, and all you geeks and nerds and dorks need to evaluate how you're
behaving.’”
When one of Ghyslain's schoolmates guilty of posting the video
contacted Baio and mailed him the teen's contact information, Baio and
Mukerji called Quebec. “[Ghyslain's] initial and understandable reaction
was that he was unsure of my intentions,” Mukerji said. “But he opened
up quickly. He's an intelligent young man. He was very guarded, but by the
end of the conversation, he was very jovial.”
Baio and Mukerji didn't stop there. They established a Web fundraiser
with the stated aim of collecting enough money to buy Ghyslain an iPod,
and the response has far exceeded their expectations — as of May 19,
they had amassed more than $1000, and thanks to an anonymous $500
donation, Baio expected the tally to top $2000 by the end of the day. The
plan is to now buy Ghyslain his own iBook.
“The video was going to spread around the Web anyway — hopefully
this will help, and if nothing else, he has an iBook to keep him
company,” Baio said. “And he also learned that geeks look out for each
other.”
