Andy Warhol claimed that everyone, in the future, would have their fifteen minutes of fame, but in April 2003 a Quebec teenager, Ghyslain Raza, painfully discovered that in today's technological world his unwanted fame was global and it wasn't short.  Unable to do anything to stop the publicity, he entered the annals of cyberspace history and mainstream popular culture as "the Star Wars Kid". 

It began when fellow students uploaded Ghyslain's school project to the Internet.  It contained footage of Ghyslain acting out a fight scene from Star Wars with a golf ball retriever as his light sabre.  Ghyslain claimed this was done without his approval.  The clip now on the World Wide Web was embellished with special visual and sound effects.  Within a few weeks, Ghyslain's school project was downloaded from the Internet millions of times and his embarrassment was very public and reported in the mainstream media around the world. ⁷ In July 2003 his family launched a $250,000 cnd lawsuit against the families of Ghyslain's classmates, claiming harassment and derision from schoolmates and the general public.  'Short videos of embarrassing, funny or illicit moments are common Internet fare."⁸  The painful consequences for this teenager involved dropping out of school and seeking psychiatric care to cope with the unwanted publicity.9