The violence of the viral | The Press

the Star Wars who ?

kid, like Star Wars Kidnamed after one of the most viral sequences on the internet, from the paleolithic era of the internet, dating from 2002. To this day, it remains a cult clip, the founder of a certain digital virality.

the Star Wars Kid became – reluctantly – a celebrity on what was still called the information highway at the beginning of the millennium.

I recall the sequence: we see a teenager, dressed like a teenager, awkward as teenagers can be, who engages in front of the camera in an imaginary lightsaber fight, solo, with comical abandon…

The teenager was Ghyslain Raza, 15, from Trois-Rivières, PQ

He knew he was being filmed, he told me in an interview on the premises of the National Film Board (ONF), which is producing a documentary on his life, to be released next week. He knew because he was the one who had activated the camera.

“I was taking part in a school project, I needed a sequence to rehearse with the editing software…”

The footage was not intended to be “consumed” publicly. However, she traveled around the world when she was later found by a classmate who showed her to other teenagers…

And one of them uploaded it to the Kazaa file-sharing site. The sequence has become, over the sharing, Star Wars Kid.

It went viral, as we didn’t say at the time. And this virus attacked young Raza on three fronts, rotting his existence in the process.

The media front: media from all over the world have taken an interest in the virality of Star Wars Kid. the New York Times spoke about the phenomenon, on the front page. Quebec media, they wanted above all to speak to the teenager, to his family, in search of the scoop.

The digital front: the “internet users”, as they were called, commented on the teenager in the video, from Tokyo to Cabano… With all the nastiness it takes to make life hell for a human being, in this specific case a human who had just turned 15.

The front of reality, of real life: Ghyslain Raza became the laughingstock of some comrades, who openly mocked him. You know how mean teenagers can be…

The young Raza was one of the first victims of these web slippages that erase the borders of the real and the virtual: “The humiliation that you are made to live does not stop, it follows you everywhere…”

He had become a distraction for his private school.

“The Seminary asked me not to come back after the summer…

“Because you were a distraction?”

– Yes. »

He has that crooked smile. He does not want it at the Séminaire Saint-Joseph, the establishment. Moreover, in the documentary In the Shadow of the Star Wars Kid¹, which focuses on his ordeal, we see him in conversation with teenagers from the Séminaire about the perils of digital technology. But for more than 10 years, Ghyslain Raza went into hiding. In 2013, he gave an interview to journalist Jonathan Trudel, from the magazine News²which presented him as “the first victim of cyberbullying on a planetary scale”.

After this interview, Ghyslain Raza closed the hatches again: no interview, no comments, thank you for your call…

Ghyslain Raza is particularly angry with the media who tracked him down in 2002. The documentary sends shivers down the spine on the pack effect that can seize the media, when they want news, when they want an interview, when they track the “good” story.

Him, 20 years later, he still wonders where the “news” was, in the sequence which starred him: “We are talking about a 15-year-old boy. Was it okay to identify him, say the name of his school, broadcast his image? Me, I think not. Why did the media talk about it? Was it in the public interest? »

Twenty years later, virality is a fact of life, not just virtual life. The virtual is embedded in the real, and vice versa. But you can’t imagine how, 20 years ago, in 2002, these things were new, unusual. You can’t imagine how abnormal going “viral” was for a 15-year-old child – yes, a child – in 2002… Abnormal and violent.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily, normal, today. But the kids grow up in a digital era, where everyone films themselves, everyone puts themselves on stage. There is an understanding of codes that did not exist in 2002. In fact, there were no codes in 2002.

And the virality bar is now higher: we watch Ghyslain playing Star Wars on the footage, and it’s obvious that today the video probably wouldn’t even get 1000 views on YouTube. But in 2002, Ghyslain Raza was the canary in the digital mine, he was cannon fodder for virality.

As the village became global thanks to the WWW, 15-year-old Ghyslain Raza from Trois-Rivières had to isolate himself to protect himself from the world, real and virtual. His parents had to pick up the phone (there were calls from all over the world, in all languages, for interviews), they had to leave the house for a while (a photographer had tried to capture his image between the living room curtains) and he did his fourth secondary alone, with a private teacher (the Seminary having asked him not to come back to disturb the students)…

Twenty years later, he notes: “I was a victim in that, but in my environment, in Trois-Rivières, there was a curious reversal. As my parents were suing the parents of the teenagers who had broadcast the sequence, I went from victim to executioner. They said that I hadn’t really suffered. That my parents wanted to make money. It was doubly hard…”

Nobody, says Ghyslain Raza, neither the media, nor Internet users, nor his own school, saw what was hidden behind the Star Wars Kid : the life of a 15-year-old child who was delivered to the entire virtual and real universe. And it was of an impossible violence, a violence that prophesied that of modern social media.

“No one supported you?

“Apart from my parents, apart from my lawyers, Kathleen Rouillard and François Vigeant, no. M^and Vigeant sent a press release, at the time, to remind that I was a child…”

I ask him to tell me about his parents. And there, imperceptibly, I feel that Ghyslain Raza is closing in, I feel that I am walking through a highly secure area:

“I’m not going to speak for them. They went through it very hard. But they were my rock in those turbulent times. They never let me down.

“Did they like the documentary?” »

Ghyslain smiles, searches for his words.

“I’ll keep their reaction to myself, but… They liked it. »

Ghyslain Raza agreed to participate in the documentary to go beyond his own story of stigmatization, to launch a social reflection. We see him in the documentary talking with teenagers who are the age he was, in 2002. He liked their openness, their benevolence: “Young people have new reflexes, they have a better awareness. »

But the purpose of this documentary, what is it? What does he want to provoke in the public space, with In the Shadow of the Star Wars Kid ?

“You have to know how to bring compassion back into what you do. It is important to maintain empathy and compassion in public discourse.

— Not just the media, because we are all media now?

– Exact. »

I took notes, I looked at this colossus with such a calm, gentle tone. And I thought there was some kind of miracle in front of me. How do we survive this? Bullying is one thing already. Global bullying? This is another thing, next level, as the young people say. That Ghyslain Raza didn’t kill himself is a kind of miracle.

How, afterwards, to trust the Other?

Ghyslain thinks about it. He replies that it took a year, before trusting himself to start trusting others again. I tell him that it is little, a year, in view of the trauma. Answer: “I cannot say whether it is a short time or not. But I was well surrounded. There is this teacher who gave me private lessons, between the Seminar and the high school…”

And Ghyslain Raza explains to me the effect of this personal teacher, the ascendancy he had over him, who saw that he was something other than this viral sequence, that he was not the Star Wars Kidthat he was just a self-constructing teenager.

“I owe him this lesson in life, to this teacher,” he told me. The relationship with others is the most beautiful thing in life. I owe him this life lesson that you have to take the risk of trusting others…”

By reflex of exactitude, I ask Ghyslain who this teacher is. Answer: this teacher who gave him private lessons for a year does not want light, so… he will remain anonymous.

“But without this teacher, would you have missed out on this life lesson?”

– I do not know. But I’m glad I didn’t miss it…”

I ask him if he is on Facebook, more or less convinced, by asking the question, that he is not there: Facebook is the place of all the lights, of all the staging of the self, of all the quarrels and, also, of all the modern intimidations. Response. “I’m here, under my real name. But all the security settings of my Facebook account are at the max, he says smiling. I mainly use it to communicate directly with people…”

And then, he notes, anyway, he is not the type to spread his life on social networks. He does not judge those who do. It’s just not his cup of tea, Ghyslain Raza, 34, doctoral student in law, survivor of the first virtual packs.

“I tend to, to put it silly and flatly, prefer the real thing. I prefer a conversation on the phone, rather than consulting a Facebook thread. I tend to keep my social life down to earth. »

Has he ever met those who, as teenagers, decided to deliver his moment of authenticity to the internet without his consent?

” No. »

Has he forgiven?

“I said it to the director Mathieu Fournier, in the film: to forgive, you have to be forgiven. »

He recalls that day, at the Seminary, when he mimed a furious battle with a lightsaber. The editing software was buggy. At first he mimed the scene cautiously, slowly, without abandon. The software always bugged, giving birth to a sequence that was too slow.

“I decided to do it one last time, faster. It had been a frustrating evening. I decided to let go of my crazy. I let myself go and that’s what contributed to the virality: everyone projected what they wanted onto these images…”

By the way, Ghyslain, your relationship with Star Warswhat is it, are you a big fan?

Ghyslain Raza’s answer is very ironic: “Not really. »

1. The documentary will be broadcast on Télé-Québec on Wednesday evening, 8 p.m.