Monica Lewinsky. The price of shame.

Video: TED – Ideas Worth Spreading

Translation: Viviane Ferraz Matos. Revision: Elena Crescia

After the scandal in the late 1990s, when her relationship with President Bill Clinton became public, Monica Lewinsky dedicated herself to campaigns promoting a safer and more respectful social media environment.

After becoming the focus of a federal investigation that invaded and shattered her private life, Monica, then only 24 years old, became known worldwide as one of the first victims of the "culture of humiliation." Following her, several other cases occurred, making this "culture," based on political and personal oppression, a now well-known media cycle, particularly in the online world.

Lewinsky survived the blows. After a decade of silence, she returns now determined to impose her personal version of the whole turbulent story. In the meantime, she received her master's degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and has become an energetic activist for a more respectful and compassionate social media.

Videographer:

Full translation of Monica Lewinsky's TED talk:

You are standing before a woman who remained publicly silent for a decade. Obviously, that has changed. But only recently.

A few months ago I gave my first major public speech at the Forbes conference, "30 Under 30": in the audience, 1.500 brilliant people, all under 30. That means that, in 1998, the oldest in the group was only 14, and the youngest, only four. I joked with them that maybe some of them had only heard of me in rap songs. Yes, I'm in rap songs. Almost 40 rap songs. (Laughter)

But on the night of my lecture, something surprising happened. At 41 years old, I was hit on by a 27-year-old man. Amazing, right? He was charming, I was flattered, but I refused. Do you know what the unfortunate line was? That he could make me feel 22 again. (Laughter) (Applause) Later I realized I'm probably the only person over 40 who doesn't want to go back to being 22. (Laughter) (Applause)

At 22, I fell in love with my boss, and at 24, I learned the devastating consequences of that.

Raise your hand if you've never made a mistake at 22, or done something you regretted? Yeah. That's what I thought. So, like me, at 22, some of you may have made the wrong choices and fallen for the wrong person; maybe even your boss. Unlike me, though, your boss probably wasn't the President of the United States. Of course, life is full of surprises.

There isn't a single day that goes by that I'm not reminded of my mistake, and I deeply regret that mistake.

In 1998, after becoming involved in an unlikely romance, I found myself at the center of a political, legal, and media whirlwind unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Remember, just a few years earlier, news was consumed from only three places: reading a newspaper or magazine, listening to the radio, or watching television. That was how it was. But that wasn't my fate. Instead, this scandal reached you through the digital revolution. This meant we could access all the information we wanted, when we wanted it, anytime, anywhere. When the story broke in January 1998, it emerged online. It was the first time traditional news had been usurped by the internet with a major news story, a click that reverberated around the world.

What this meant to me personally was that, overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to being publicly humiliated worldwide. I was "patient zero" in losing my personal reputation on a global scale, almost instantly.

The haste of judgment, fueled by technology, brought virtual stone-throwers in droves. This was before social media, but people could still comment online, send stories by email, and of course, send cruel jokes by email. News sources spread photos of me everywhere to sell newspapers, online advertising banners, and to keep people glued to the TV. Do you remember a particular image of me, say, wearing a beret?

Well, I admit I made mistakes, especially wearing that beret. But the attention and judgment I received—not the story, but what I personally received—were unprecedented. I was labeled a slut, a whore, a tramp, a prostitute, a gold digger, and, of course, "that woman." I was seen by many, but truly known by few. And I understand: it was easy to forget that that woman had a dimension, had a soul, and that she was once intact.

Seventeen years ago, there wasn't a name for what happened to me. Now we call it "cyberbullying" and online harassment. Today, I want to share some of my experiences with you, talk about how this experience helped shape my cultural observations, and how I hope my experience can lead to change that results in less suffering for others.

In 1998, I lost my reputation and dignity. I lost almost everything, and I almost lost my life.

Let me paint the picture for you. It's September 1998. I'm sitting in a windowless office, the independent prosecutor's office, under the hum of fluorescent lights. I hear the sound of my voice, my voice on clandestinely recorded phone calls that a supposed friend had made a year earlier. I'm there because I was legally required to personally authenticate all 20 hours of recorded conversations. For the past eight months, the mysterious contents of these tapes have hung like the sword of Damocles over my head. Who remembers what they said a year ago? Frightened and mortified, I listen. I hear my voice chattering about the day's events. I hear myself confessing my love for the president, and, of course, my romantic disappointment. I hear myself, sometimes malicious, sometimes indelicate, sometimes silly, being cruel, merciless, vulgar. I listen deeply, deeply ashamed, to the worst version of myself, a "me" I don't even recognize.

A few days later, the Starr Report was released to Congress, and all those tapes and transcripts, those stolen words, are part of it. The fact that people could read the transcripts was already horrific, but a few weeks later, the audio tapes were broadcast on TV and significant portions became available online. The public humiliation was excruciating. Life became almost unbearable.

This wasn't something that happened regularly in 1998, and I'm referring to the theft of private words, actions, conversations, or photos, only to then make everything public—public without consent, public without context, and public without compassion.

Twelve years later, in 2010, social media had already emerged. Unfortunately, the landscape became more filled with examples like mine, regardless of whether a mistake was actually made or not, and now encompasses both public and private figures. The consequences for some have become dramatic, very dramatic.

I was on the phone with my mother in September 2010, and we were talking about the news regarding a young freshman at Rutgers University named Tyler Clementi. Sweet, sensitive, and creative, Tyler was secretly filmed by his roommate having intimate relations with another man. When the online world learned of this incident, the ridicule and cyberbullying began. A few days later, Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge, committing suicide. He was 18 years old.

My mother was distraught by what happened to Tyler and his family, and she suffered greatly, in a way I couldn't understand. Later I realized she was reliving 1998, reliving a time when she sat on my bed every night, reliving a time when she made me shower with the door open, and reliving a time when my parents feared I might die from so much humiliation, literally.

Today, many parents haven't had the chance to act and rescue their loved ones. Many only learn of their children's suffering and humiliation when it's too late. Tyler's tragic and senseless death was a turning point for me. It served to re-contextualize my experiences, and I began to look at the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see something different. In 1998, we had no way of knowing where this audacious new technology called the internet would take us. Since then, it has connected people in unimaginable ways, reuniting missing siblings, saving lives, launching revolutions, but the darkness, cyberbullying, and shame I experienced have multiplied rapidly. 

Every day on the internet, people, especially young people who haven't yet matured enough to deal with it, are so harassed and humiliated that they can't imagine living another day, and some tragically don't, and there's nothing virtual about it. ChildLine, a charity that helps young people in the UK, released a striking statistic last year: from 2012 to 2013, there was an 87% increase in calls and emails related to cyberbullying. A meta-analysis conducted outside the Netherlands showed, for the first time, that cyberbullying led to suicidal ideation more significantly than real-life bullying. And what shocked me, though it shouldn't have, was another study from last year showing that humiliation is an emotion felt more intensely than happiness, or even anger.

Cruelty towards others is nothing new, but online, technologically enhanced humiliation is amplified, uncontrollable, and permanently accessible. The echo of shame used to extend only to your family, neighborhood, school, or community, but now it's the online community as well. Millions of people, almost always anonymously, can stab you with words, and that is very painful, and there is no limit to the number of people who can publicly observe and publicly condemn you. There is a very personal price to pay for public humiliation, and the growth of the internet has raised that price.

For nearly two decades, we have slowly planted the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil, both in the virtual environment and outside of it. Gossip sites, paparazzi, reality shows, politics, news agencies, and sometimes hackers, all thrive on shame. This has given rise to desensitization and a permissive online environment that lends itself to trolling, invasion of privacy, and cyberbullying. This shift has created what Professor Nicolaus Mills calls a culture of humiliation. Consider some prominent examples from just the last six months. Snapchat, the service used primarily by younger generations, claims its messages have a lifespan of only a few seconds. You can imagine the breadth of content that passes through it. An app that Snapchat users employ to preserve the duration of messages was hacked, and 100 private conversations, photos, and videos leaked online, now eternally available. Jennifer Lawrence and many other actors had their iCloud accounts hacked, and private, intimate, nude photos were released online without permission. A gossip website received over 5 million clicks for that single story. And the Sony Pictures cyberhacking? The documents that received the most attention were the private emails that had the maximum potential for public humiliation.

But in this culture of humiliation, there's another kind of price tag attached to public shame. The price doesn't measure the cost to the victim, which Tyler and so many others, especially women, minorities, and members of the LGBT community, have paid, but rather the profit of those who exploit them. This invasion of privacy is an efficient and inhumanely mined raw material, packaged and sold for profit. A market has emerged where public humiliation is a product and shame, an industry. How is this money made? Clicks. The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising money. We are in a dangerous cycle. The more we click on this kind of gossip, the more insensitive we become to the human lives behind it, and the more insensitive we become, the more we click. Every hour, someone is making money at the expense of another person's suffering. With each click, we make a choice. The more we saturate our culture with public shaming, the more acceptable it becomes, and the more we see behaviors like cyberbullying, trolling, some forms of hacking, and online harassment. Why? Because they all have humiliation at their core. This behavior is a symptom of the culture we have created. Think about it.

Behavioral change begins with the evolution of beliefs. We have seen this to be true in relation to racism, homophobia, and many other prejudices, both current and past. Just as we have changed regarding same-sex marriage, equal freedoms are offered to more people. When we began to value sustainability, more people started to recycle. Therefore, regarding our culture of humiliation, we need a cultural revolution. Public humiliation as a blood sport needs to end, and it's time for an intervention on the internet and in our culture.

Change begins with something simple, but not easy. We need to return to an ancient value of compassion – compassion and empathy. On the internet, we have a deficit of compassion, a crisis of empathy.

Researcher Brené Brown said, and I quote her: “Shame cannot survive empathy.” I went through some very dark days in my life, and it was the compassion and empathy of my family, friends, professionals, and even strangers that saved me. Even the empathy of just one person can make a difference. The minority influence theory, proposed by social psychologist Serge Moscovici, says that even in small numbers, when there is consistency over time, change can occur. In the online world, we can foster minority influence by becoming “agents.” Becoming an “agent” means that, instead of the apathy of the observer, we can post a positive comment or report a bullying situation. Believe me, compassionate comments help to reduce negativity. We can also combat this culture by supporting organizations that deal with these issues, such as the Tyler Clementi Foundation in the United States. In the United Kingdom, there is Anti-Bullying Pro, and in Australia there is Project Rockit.

We talk a lot about our right to freedom of speech, but we need to talk more about our responsibility with freedom of speech. We all want to be heard, but let's acknowledge the difference between speaking with intention and speaking to gain attention. The internet is the highway to the Id, but online, demonstrating empathy for others benefits us all and helps create a safer and better world. We need to communicate online with compassion, consume news with compassion, and click with compassion. Just imagine walking a mile in someone else's headline. I'd like to end with a personal comment. Over the past nine months, the question I've been asked most is why. Why now? Why did I have the courage to speak out? You can read between the lines of those questions, and the answer has nothing to do with politics. The main answer was and is: "Because it's time: time to stop treading on eggshells about my past; time to stop living a life of opprobrium; and time to reclaim my narrative."

It's not just about saving me. Anyone who suffers from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing: you can survive it. I know it's hard. It may not be painless, quick, or easy, but you can insist on a different ending to your story. Have compassion for yourself. We all deserve compassion and to live in a more compassionate world, both online and offline.

Thanks for listening.