Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Internet Destroyed His Life // The Star Wars Kid Story

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Ghyslain Raza, famously known as the Star Wars Kid, became one of the internet's very first viral phenomena after a private video he recorded in 2002 was leaked online without his consent.

Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. What would happen if your most embarrassing moment was posted online and you became famous for it? Well, for this kid, it completely ruined his life. Now, the kid's name is Raza, and Raza's only 14 when all this starts, and he's living in Quebec. and he's a pretty normal kid.

Like he goes to high school, he's in the ninth grade. But one day in 2002, he does something that's going to change his life forever. Because he's at school that day working on a video for a project in AV club, and the project, it's going to be a parody of a bunch of classic movies, including a movie you may have heard of called Star Wars. And Raza is in the middle of learning how to add special effects to footage. Specifically, he's learning how to make lightsabers. in post. So he records a few takes of himself with an 8mm camcorder, holding a long golf

ball retriever so that he can add the lightsaber effects to it later. And on his last take, Raza decides, ah, what the hell, might as well have some fun with this. And I mean, why shouldn't he? He's the only one who's ever going to see this tape, am I right? So on his final take, he really goes for it. For two minutes, he has a bunch of fun pretending to be lightsaber fighting. Once he's done, he packs up and he goes home and he leaves the 8mm tape at school to work on later. And five months go by. So now it's 2003. And Raza, he hasn't thought about that project or the tape at all. Meanwhile, one of the other students at the school finds it and he watches it and he thinks it's absolutely hilarious. And so he starts showing it to more of his friends who also think

it's hilarious until one of them says, Hey, I have an idea. And he takes it. And he takes it. the tape and he digitizes it because he wants to use the AV club editing software to do something most people haven't even thought of at the time. He wants to put this video on the internet. So he puts it on the internet. But here's the thing, it's 2003, there are no smartphones, there is no YouTube or TikToks. So if a video is going to get shared around, it's going to be because one person sends it to another person who then sends it to another person. And that, is exactly what happens. Raza's video gets uploaded

and passed around more than your mama. They also put it on a peer-to-peer file sharing network called Kazaa. And soon, the whole school has seen it and a lot of the internet. And the students, they're not laughing with him, they're laughing at him.

So every time he comes to school, it is brutal. He's mocked and picked on so much that he can barely concentrate in class. So he's, he ends up going to the school admins to help him with the bullying. But they think that Raza is part of the problem. I mean, this is a private school with a reputation to uphold.

They see all this attention he's getting as bad publicity for them. So they recommend that he drop his classes and not come back for a year until this negative attention dies down. And so eventually, poor Raza has to withdraw from school altogether and his parents agree to start paying for private tutoring. Oh, and this is just the beginning of his problems. Because soon, people on the internet find the video and they start making edits and remixing it and adding their own effects, which makes the thing blow up even more. And suddenly, Raza isn't just being mocked by the kids at his school.

He's being mocked by the entire World Wide Web. Then, around this time, a popular blogger sees the video. and he uploads it to his website, and he calls it Star Wars Kid, which is what we know it by now. And every comment everywhere is just super mean, and people are making fun of him for being a Star Wars nerd, because, you know, believe it or not, it used to be very uncool to be a Star Wars nerd.

And like, people are making fun of his weight and stuff and, like, body shaming him. Some of them are even suggesting that he should end his own life. That is insane. And so within a few months, Star Wars Kid is the most seen video on the internet. And eventually, it gets around a billion views by some estimates. In fact, this video gets so big that it makes its way to mainstream media. One of the first times in history that something from the internet has gone viral and made its way to mainstream.

So of course, Raza is being talked about on the news and in newspapers and reporters are talking are totally irresponsible with his personal information. And they reveal his name and like where he's from. And keep in mind, he's still a minor. So if he had committed some kind of actual crime in Canada, releasing his name to the public would be against the law. But because that didn't happen, he only went viral on the internet. There are no protections.

Because there's never needed to be. Because during this time, this had never happened before in history. So now, report. and paparazzi are showing up to his family's house, and some of them camp outside trying to ask him questions and snap pictures of him. They even try to take pictures of him through the window curtains. And at one point, Raza is in his own backyard when he sees reporters chilling in his neighbor's yard trying to take pictures of him.

And so at this point, Raza and his parents can't take all this media attention anymore, and they decide they have no choice but to move. So, they move. Also, around this time, Raza's parents hire lawyers to help protect him from all of this, specifically from the media harassing him. And the lawyers, they look into all of it,

and he's been run out of his school, run out of his home, and his parents have to pay for private tutoring and now legal fees, all because some teenage bullies at his old school put a video of him on the internet without his knowledge. So his parents decide that the best way to him,

handle all this is to sue. They want to send a message to the world that what happened to their son was not okay. And so, bam, they file a lawsuit against the four bullies who posted the video and their parents. And this is actually one of the first legal actions in history ever taken, which argues that posting someone's private video online without their permission could cause real damage to their lives. And interestingly enough, instead of taking the side of the minor who was ruthlessly bullied by the entire internet, the news outlets and talk shows start trashing Raza's parents for suing and painting them as greedy and accusing them of exploiting the situation.

And while all that is going on, Raza is still really struggling with all of this mentally. So he starts seeing a psychiatrist first. help, which then starts this weird rumor online that the Star Wars Kid has been committed to a mental institution, which is just not true. And so about three years pass, and it's now 2006, and the Star Wars Kid video is still impacting Raz's everyday life. And it's only a few days before he's scheduled to go to trial for his lawsuit, and the courthouse personally contacts his parents. Like, we're overwhelmed with media attention. We actually had to hire additional security to deal with this trial. And so, Raza, he knows what's about to happen. If he goes to trial to try and get justice,

it'll only bring more unwanted attention on him, and that is the last thing he wants. So, he and his parents decide to settle out of court for a small amount of money. That amount is actually undisclosed. While the bullies and their parents never apologize, not publicly, or make any kind of statement about it. And yeah, it's weird because Raza was literally patient zero for cyberbullying. And it's crazy because cyberbullying, it just feels like such a standard part of our culture now. Like even the president like cyberbullies people and shit. Regardless, fortunately for Raza, he eventually does get through it.

In fact, later in his life, he ends up going to law school and he becomes a lawyer and he finally gets to live the way a normal person gets to live. And now, to this day, he's actually an advocate for people who are being cyberbullied. And sometimes he does public speaking about digital privacy and online consent and how laws fail to protect minors on the internet and stuff like that. So, good for him.