In 2002, a 15-year-old Quebec boy named Ghyslain Raza filmed himself swinging a golf ball retriever in imitation of Darth Maul’s double-bladed light saber from The Phantom Menace. The private video leaked onto the internet and became perhaps the biggest viral video of the pre-Youtube era under the name “The Star Wars Kid.” Traumatized by the ensuing ridicule and bullying, Raza has spoken about the video only once before, and the man who initially helped popularize it, Andy Baio (MetaFilter’s own), has declined to be interviewed about it. They talk together for the first time about this formative moment in unwelcome internet fame in a new documentary Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows/Dans l’ombre du Star Wars Kid streaming free from the National Film Board of Canada.

H/T: Metafilter