What we learned from Monica Lewinsky's speech on TED
17 years ago, the world learned the name of Monica Lewinsky. An intern at the White House, then working at the Pentagon, became a participant in a scandal - a romance with the acting and married US President Bill Clinton. General condemnation of Lewinsky made her almost the sole culprit of the incident, and her name immediately became a household word. About the mistake of Bill Clinton gradually forgotten, helped by the sustained reaction of his wife Hillary, but Monica, even many years later, was not able to get rid of the bad glory of "that very girl." All these years, she remained under media attention and continued to endure insults and harassment from strangers.
During all this time, Lewinsky never really managed to establish either professional or private life because of the inevitable associations with the scandal. She moved to the UK, where she graduated from the London School of Economics, specializing in social psychology. Despite the fact that the last ten years she tried to avoid public speaking, she openly and with undisguised regret answered questions about the events that determined the course of her life. At the TED Truth or Action conference, which was held from March 16 to 20 in Vancouver, Monica Lewinsky was one of the speakers, making a speech about Internet harassment. Other lecturers include Marina Abramovich, Bill Gates, Aloe Blacc, and many other specialists in various fields who gave inspirational lectures on how truth and appropriate actions can make the world a better place. We publish the main theses of her speech.
Not a day goes by without me being reminded of how I stumbled, and I deeply regret my mistake. In 1998, I was seized by the whirlpool of an impermissible romance, and I was thrown onto the shore by a wave of political, legal, and media tsunami, which had not happened before.
This scandal smashed the world through the digital revolution. For the first time the familiar world of news reports collapsed under the pressure of the Internet. One click - and overnight from an unknown girl I turned into a man whose name was inclined in every corner of the world.
The curiosity and condemnation that I aroused — not the scandal itself, but me personally — were unprecedented. I was branded as a slut, a whore, a squirt, a fifa and, of course, that woman. Almost everyone knew about me, but in reality very few people knew me. It's so easy to forget that "that woman" is actually a multi-dimensional person and she has a soul.
In 1998, I lost both my reputation and my self-esteem. I lost myself. Then, seventeen years ago, when it happened, there was no name for it. Now we call it Internet harassment.
Then, in 1998, it was not a common occurrence that occurs at every turn. When I say “this,” I mean the theft and public display of the artifacts of people's private lives, their actions, words or photographs. Bringing them to the court audience that is not interested in the context or your opinion, which is not known sympathy.
Every day online humiliate people, especially young ones, who have not yet developed the habit of withstanding and enduring attacks. It is violence against a person who makes life unbearable and raises the question of how to live on.
For almost two decades, we imperceptibly planted the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil. Gossip sites, paparazzi, reality shows, politics, news outlets, and hacker attacks - all this has created a current situation.
Formed a market where public humiliation is a commodity, and shame - the whole industry. How is money made? Clicks. The more shameful, the more clicks, more clicks - more advertising dollars ... We are in a vicious circle: the more we click on gossip, the more insensitive we become, we forget that there are real people behind the rumors.
Anyone who has been humiliated in public and who bears the stamp of shame must remember: it is possible to survive. I know this is hard. Probably, it will not pass for you painlessly, easily or quickly, but your life is only in your hands and you have the right to insist on living it the way you want.
The photo: Ted