Bettina Korek: Who Am I?
When I received an invitation to a party at a shoe store in Beverly Hills to welcome Jeffrey Deitch, the new Director of MOCA, I wasn’t sure what to think. It made better sense when I “heard” about Tod’s CEO Diego Della Valle’s relationship wi…
Megan Smolenyak: Bret Michaels: The Rusyn Roots of the Rock of Love
Rock and reality TV star Bret Michaels has been yo-yoing in and out of hospitals in a steady stream of medical episodes, each one supposedly unrelated to the last. And each time, the determined 47-year-old gets back up and signs himself out. …
Who Was There: Stars Come Out For Game Two Of Western Conference Finals
Last night the Downtown Staples Center was ablaze with star power. While the unstoppable Bryant and Gasol carried the Los Angeles Lakers to a 124-112 lead over the Phoenix Suns in game two of the Western Conference Finals, Hollywood honchos l…
Greg Korn: Extorting Celebrities 101: A How To
Okay, this is not actually an instructional guide on extorting celebrities. I just found the title catchy. But as I was reading the recent story of “David Boreanaz and the Case of the Mysterious Mistress,” it struck me that some are either s…
Lakers-Celtics PHOTOS: Big Names, Big Game: Celebs In Stands For Lakers-Celtics Finals
Last night at the Staples Center the Los Angeles Lakers made their famous fans proud, with a home court victory over the Celtics in game one of the NBA Finals. Rapper Snoop Dogg rooted for his boys alongside actress Hilary Swank, while power …
Jeremiah Reynolds: A Guide to the Laws of Selling Celebrity Sex Tapes: Why Kendra Must Have Consented
Let’s imagine that you and your eighteen-year-old girlfriend get bored one day and decide to make a sex tape. Let’s further imagine that your ex-girlfriend eventually breaks up with you but (thankfully) forgets to demand that you destroy the …
Alex Pasternack: After Lawsuits and Therapy, Cyber-Bullied "Star Wars Kid" Returns
It may be the most legendary monument to the internet’s 15 megabytes of fame – or unintentional infamy: eight years ago, private footage of a heavy-set teenager, spinning nearly uncontrollably while wielding an imaginary-lightsaber, as if in an audition tape for Star Wars, was uploaded to the web and passed around.
Within days it was well on its way to becoming the most popular viral video of all time. It’s since been viewed by over 1 billion people. (If, somehow, you haven’t seen it, watch here.)
Not as many people know the rest of the story: Ghyslain Raza – or to the internet, Star Wars Kid – didn’t feel famous, or funny. He felt harassed, the victim of the most visible bullying in history. Ghyslain dropped out of his Quebec high school, was diagnosed with depression, and checked into a psychiatric ward for children.
Ghyslain and his parents would later sue the families of the three classmates who leaked the video in 2003, for around $250,000. According to the lawsuit, which resulted in a settlement, “Ghyslain had to endure, and still endures today, harassment and derision from his high school mates and the public at large.”
But after eight years of laughs at his expense – and a few campaigns in his defense – Ghyslain is back. Now in his early 20s, he’s reemerged as the president of the Patrimoine Trois-Rivieres, a conservation society that aims to preserve the cultural heritage of his hometown of Trois-Rivieres.
Revenge of the Sith this isn’t, but he’s putting his litigious experience to some use, getting his law degree at McGill University in Montreal.
The vicissitudes of the internet are now well known, thanks in parts to tales like Ghyslain’s, and Alexey “Impossible Is Nothing” Vayner, whom I interviewed recently in a documentary. But cyberbullying and trolling have only grown more intense since “Star Wars Kid,” due to the increasing tendency to share, the decline of privacy, and the morally-fluid culture of anonymity that has grown around message boards like 4chan.
Read the rest at Motherboard.tv
Read more: Suicide, Youtube, Internet, Mental Health, Celebrity, Cyberbullying, Star Wars, Message Boards, Social Networking, Technology News
Reverend Billy: Running in Great Cities
Today I jogged through Amsterdam from the Royal Palace on Dam Square to the mouth of the river. Like many European city centers, Amsterdam has evolved into a super mall, an old surface covered with the images of models posing with products, of…
Brooks Peters: Mariage Blanc
Less known than her storied husband, author W. Somerset Maugham, the decorator Syrie Maugham is nevertheless a legendary figure in the worlds of high style and interior design. With her signature “white on white” palette, she single-handedly r…
Ann Brenoff: Oprah: Won’t You Hire Me?
By all accounts, Oprah Winfrey made a magnanimous gesture by handing out iPads and $10,000 checks to all the employees of her O Magazine. In today’s climate of high unemployment and even higher job insecurity, the news spread so fast that you …
