[0:00]
Did this video destroy the world? That might sound crazy, but I have a theory here. Of course, that video is Star Wars kid. If you don't recognize it, you are either very young or you just got an internet connection today. It was simply the first truly viral internet video in history. Also, I believe it was one of the most pivotal moments in our culture. See, this video went viral in 2003. That is before YouTube. That is before smartphones and in fact 
[0:30]
That's before phones could play video at all. And it was long before social media. It predates “Charlie Bit my finger” or the Numa Numa dance. And yet it would be viewed nearly a billion times. So here's what happened: Back in 2002, a student in Quebec named Ghyslain Raza was filming a Star Wars parody at his high school. He was 14 years old at the time. Near the end of filming, he picked up a pole they were using to simulate Darth Maul's lightsaber, and he just started screwing around. 
[1:02]
Now, what must be remembered is that he was doing this with a VCR. A physical video cassette The practice of filming yourself and uploading it to the internet was all but unheard of in 2002. This is a very important point: He did not put this out there himself. He made the mistake of leaving the tape behind. Some bullies at his school found the tape and then went through the laborious process of Digitizing the footage, it would get uploaded to the internet 
[1:34]
In 2003, six months after he filmed it, it started to go viral on primitive file sharing sites and then got picked up by a popular blog called waxy.org. That was the first time somebody referred to him as “Star Wars Kid.” Every content aggregation site in the world picked this thing up. Endless remixes flooded the internet. People added music and special effects. Then it made its way to TV. By that next month, they were reporting on it in the New York Times. And again, I cannot emphasize enough that at this time, 
[2:07]
there was no playbook for how to deal with something like this. The concept of a person going viral in a video against their will was brand new to the earth. And for this 15 year old kid, it was very clear that the world was not laughing with him. That first blogger that shared the video had to quickly shut down the comments because they became so vicious. Ghyslain had to drop out of school. He lost his friends. He was getting inundated with people telling him to off himself. His parents had to move out of their house. 
[2:39]
They would later file a lawsuit against some of the families of the kids who shared the video. They would wind up settling out of court for some undisclosed amount. But even he could not have known that this was the dawn of a New era in which people would use this technology to seek out others and then use them as a receptacle for their own insecurities. After all, a lot of the bullying that was aimed at this kid was from other nerds. This first spread among Star Wars fans and among tech blogs. 
[3:10]
And even now, some of you're watching this and saying, “it's just a harmless little bit of fun.” But I am telling you, an entire generation of children observed what happened here. Even if they themselves laughed at the clip, they Learned a very valuable lesson, which is that the kind of thing that teenagers had been doing for all of human history, the cringe and silly and awkward things they do while developing their personalities, that they were now in a world where it was no longer safe to do those things. 
[3:40]
in the past, if you were awkward at a party, or if you danced weird at a dance, you might get made fun of by your classmates. You may get a demeaning nickname. But this made it clear that one cringey misstep could destroy your life, could destroy the lives of your family. You wouldn't have 10 bullies, or 20 or 30. You would have 100 million of them. And it would follow you forever. So you fast forward a couple of decades, and experts are in a panic. 
[4:10]
Birth rates have fallen through the floor worldwide. Wherever smartphones arrive, people stop having kids, not Because the phones are causing infertility, but because the phones are stopping people from dating at all. And the reason they're not dating is because they are not socializing. They are not going to parties. And in fact, they don't put themselves out there in any capacity. They don't dance, they don't ask each other out. They don't gather and drink and do the stuff the kids have been doing forever. But of course they don't. They have accurately judged the danger. 
[4:42]
Because keep in mind, the danger is not just that you will be caught on Camera being cringe. There may not be a camera nearby when you approach someone and ask them out, but if they walk away and turn on Instagram and look into their own camera and mock you for it, then that's it, you're just as screwed. Unless you were born socially perfect, it's just not worth it. Because the best case scenario is that you will only get mocked by your peers and classmates. The worst case is that it breaks containment. And now your entire life 
[5:13]
and your entire being is reduced down to this one moment. So, yeah, the only safe place is to be alone in your room. It has made everyone afraid of each other. And changed the trajectory of history as a result.