Star Wars Kid and new media

I wrote this post almost a month ago. I say this because there is some sort of pride in addressing something before we do in class. I didn't have time to finish it and became busy with other things but today's class was relevant so I decided to finish it up and post it.


So I'll bet many of you have seen this:



This was really popular when I was in high school. This was the first of many videos on the internet to be termed "viral" (the first is speculated to be "the dancing baby" ca. 1996). This particular youtube video has over 15 million views! However, it has been estimated that in 2006, only three years after the release of the video onto the net that the video had over 900M. The current view king of youtube has only 165M.

Viral videos are all over the place and most of us have seen well, all of them. "Chocolate Rain", "Tunak, Tunak, Tun", "The grape lady", "Lazy Sunday" if you haven't seen these you probably should, because they may be an answer on a game show you may be on someday. For the most part these videos are all in good fun for example "evolution of dance" is a comedy sketch, or "lazy sunday" which is a SNL skit they are meant to be seen and laughed at.

Then there are the ones that weren't meant to be funny but we laugh at like "Grape lady falls" which (I'll be honest) still makes me laugh. But is that ok? Is it really ethical to let these videos just post all around the world? Or should libel/slander laws be expanded to apply here? I don't honestly know but it's something to think about.

Let's look at a few examples:

The grape lady, this lady reported for Fox news out of D.C. that means that everyone watching the news saw this, plus the over 5.5 million views on youtube plus everyone that saw the episode of Family Guy plus everyone that then saw the Family Guy clip on youtube. That's a lot of people, how would you like your most embarrassing moment of all time to be broadcast to 10 million people? I wouldn't, now in the case of the grape lady she's doing ok, she works in New England somewhere or something as a reporter. But what about old Ghyslain?

That's right Ghyslain, Ghyslain Raza? A.K.A. "The starwars kid", this poor guy was already an awkward teenager when this video came out it didn't help that his shame was posted all over the web. If you don't know the story poor Ghyslain taped this video in the schools studio and then forgot to erase it. Some peers of his found the tape digitized it and posted it on the net. I remember feeling that this would have been my dream, me fighting with my sweet lightsaber for all the world to see! I would be the closest thing to a real Jedi Knight, MTV would interview me, I'd start a franchise which Lucas Films would purchase we're talking merchandise, autographs maybe a talk show. All that happening is really a long shot but I had an avid imagination. It wasn't the same for Ghyslain though, in fact his parents filed a lawsuit against the kids, they ended up settling out of court but he still had a hard time with it. I looked him up on facebook hoping to find a huge fan site for him but no he (if it really was him) was just a normal guy, I think he had about a hundred friends which means he doesn't just let anyone jump in. Poor kid, he probably gets more friend requests in a day than I have in my entire facebook career, which isn't saying much.

It's interesting to say the least, the latest viral video which pokes fun of someone that I've seen is John Daker. Some poor christian guy got up to sing a song made a couple mistakes and now he's famous. I kinda hope he's dead now. Let me clarify that by saying I hope he's dead so he doesn't have to feel the embarrassment.

Last and not least is B-money. He's in my ward, his name is Bryan. He's a nice guy but he's got a few issues. The interesting thing about his videos is he puts them up seriously, but they're deemed as a joke. At the same time they are pretty good. I think this case is particularly interesting because you have someone who is thinking "wow I'm getting really famous and popular in a good way" but it's almost the exact opposite.

So what do you do about videos like this? I haven't even got into sex tape scandals. Or the snowboarder who dropped out of the olympics because of his pictures. The fact is whether he have cameras implanted in our eyes or not a lot of our lives are on film  and a lot of film is on the net. I mean shoot, Dr. Coyne had her marriage proposal taped and she never even knew it. Crazy stuff.