As anyone with a Boba Fett action figure already knows, May 4 is Star Wars Day, as in, "May the Fourth be with you.” (Yeah, it’s kind of a stretch). It has become so big that even NASA celebrates it.
With Star Wars Day exploding across the Internet, it’s easy to forget that in 1977, when TIE Fighters first screeched across the big screen, the Web did not exist.
Grow, the fan base did, as kids snapped up action figures and eagerly awaited the release of the third film of the original trilogy, “Return of the Jedi,” in 1983.
It was not until a decade later that Mosaic, the first Web browser, was released. Before the birth of the Web, hardcore “Star Wars” fans were confined to creating ASCII art in the bulletin board systems (BBSes) of the 1980s and, later, discussing the finer parts of sarlacc physiology in AOL and CompuServe chatrooms.
Then came the GeoCities and Angelfire fan sites of the 1990s and early 2000s, which allowed people to express their love of "Star Wars" with help of advanced flaming counter and dancing baby technology."Star Wars" geekdom spread over peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Kazaa, where video of a Canadian teenager pretending to wield a double-bladed lightsaber was uploaded in 2002. It became one of the very first viral videos, with some estimates putting the number of views over 1 billion. It was not so great for its star, Ghyslain Raza, who was ridiculed by classmates after becoming famous as "Star Wars Kid." (Now a law graduate from McGill University, he has spoken publicly about the dangers of cyberbullying).
Like the twin suns of Tatooine, Reddit and YouTube emerged in 2005 and 2006, respectively, and pretty much put the "Star Wars" meme-machine into hyperdrive.