WEBVTT

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You're looking at a woman
who was publicly silent for a decade.

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Obviously, that's changed,

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but only recently.

NOTE Paragraph

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It was several months ago that I gave
my very first major public talk,

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at the Forbes "30 Under 30 Summit" --

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1,500 brilliant people,
all under the age of 30.

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That meant that in 1998,
the oldest among the group were only 14,

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and the youngest, just four.

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I joked with them that some might only
have heard of me from rap songs.

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Yes, I'm in rap songs.

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(Laughter)

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Almost 40 rap songs.

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(Laughter)

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But the night of my speech,
a surprising thing happened.

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At the age of 41, I was hit on
by a 27-year-old guy.

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(Laughter)

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I know, right?

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He was charming, and I was flattered,

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and I declined.

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You know what his unsuccessful
pickup line was?

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He could make me feel 22 again.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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I realized, later that night,

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I'm probably the only person over 40
who does not want to be 22 again.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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At the age of 22,
I fell in love with my boss.

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And at the age of 24,

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I learned the devastating consequences.

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Can I see a show of hands of anyone here

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who didn't make a mistake
or do something they regretted at 22?

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Yep. That's what I thought.

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So like me, at 22, a few of you
may have also taken wrong turns

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and fallen in love with the wrong person,

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maybe even your boss.

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Unlike me, though,

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your boss probably wasn't the president
of the United States of America.

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(Laughter)

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Of course, life is full of surprises.

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Not a day goes by that I'm not
reminded of my mistake,

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and I regret that mistake deeply.

NOTE Paragraph

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In 1998, after having been swept up
into an improbable romance,

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I was then swept up into the eye
of a political, legal and media maelstrom

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like we had never seen before.

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Remember, just a few years earlier,

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news was consumed from just three places:

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reading a newspaper or magazine,

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listening to the radio

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or watching television.

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That was it.

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But that wasn't my fate.

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Instead, this scandal was brought to you

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by the digital revolution.

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That meant we could access
all the information we wanted,

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when we wanted it, anytime, anywhere.

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And when the story broke in January 1998,

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it broke online.

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It was the first time the traditional news
was usurped by the internet

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for a major news story --

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a click that reverberated
around the world.

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What that meant for me personally

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was that overnight, I went from being
a completely private figure

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to a publicly humiliated one, worldwide.

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I was patient zero of losing
a personal reputation on a global scale

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almost instantaneously.

NOTE Paragraph

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This rush to judgment,
enabled by technology,

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led to mobs of virtual stone-throwers.

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Granted, it was before social media,

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but people could still comment online,

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e-mail stories,

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and, of course, e-mail cruel jokes.

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News sources plastered
photos of me all over

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to sell newspapers, banner ads online,

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and to keep people tuned to the TV.

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Do you recall a particular image of me,
say, wearing a beret?

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, I admit I made mistakes --

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especially wearing that beret.

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(Laughter)

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But the attention and judgment
that I received --

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not the story, but that
I personally received --

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was unprecedented.

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I was branded as a tramp,

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tart,

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slut,

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whore,

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bimbo,

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and, of course, "that woman."

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I was seen by many,

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but actually known by few.

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And I get it: it was easy to forget

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that that woman was dimensional,

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had a soul

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and was once unbroken.

NOTE Paragraph

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When this happened to me 17 years ago,
there was no name for it.

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Now we call it "cyberbullying"
and "online harassment."

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Today, I want to share
some of my experience with you,

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talk about how that experience has helped
shape my cultural observations,

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and how I hope my past experience
can lead to a change

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that results in less suffering for others.

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In 1998, I lost my reputation
and my dignity.

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I lost almost everything.

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And I almost lost my life.

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Let me paint a picture for you.

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It is September of 1998.

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I'm sitting in a windowless office room

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inside the Office
of the Independent Counsel,

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underneath humming fluorescent lights.

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I'm listening to the sound of my voice,

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my voice on surreptitiously
taped phone calls

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that a supposed friend
had made the year before.

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I'm here because
I've been legally required

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to personally authenticate
all 20 hours of taped conversation.

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For the past eight months,
the mysterious content of these tapes

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has hung like the sword
of Damocles over my head.

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I mean, who can remember
what they said a year ago?

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Scared and mortified, I listen,

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listen as I prattle on about the flotsam
and jetsam of the day;

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listen as I confess my love
for the president,

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and, of course, my heartbreak;

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listen to my sometimes catty,
sometimes churlish, sometimes silly self

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being cruel, unforgiving, uncouth;

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listen, deeply, deeply ashamed,
to the worst version of myself,

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a self I don't even recognize.

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A few days later, the Starr Report
is released to Congress,

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and all of those tapes and transcripts,
those stolen words, form a part of it.

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That people can read the transcripts
is horrific enough.

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But a few weeks later,

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the audiotapes are aired on TV,

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and significant portions
made available online.

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The public humiliation was excruciating.

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Life was almost unbearable.

NOTE Paragraph

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This was not something that happened
with regularity back then in 1998,

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and by "this," I mean the stealing
of people's private words, actions,

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conversations or photos,

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and then making them public --

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public without consent,

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public without context

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and public without compassion.

NOTE Paragraph

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Fast-forward 12 years, to 2010,

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and now social media has been born.

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The landscape has sadly become much
more populated with instances like mine,

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whether or not someone
actually made a mistake,

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and now, it's for both public
and private people.

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The consequences for some
have become dire, very dire.

NOTE Paragraph

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I was on the phone with my mom
in September of 2010,

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and we were talking about the news
of a young college freshman

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from Rutgers University,

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named Tyler Clementi.

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Sweet, sensitive, creative Tyler
was secretly webcammed by his roommate

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while being intimate with another man.

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When the online world
learned of this incident,

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the ridicule and cyberbullying ignited.

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A few days later,

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Tyler jumped from
the George Washington Bridge

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to his death.

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He was 18.

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My mom was beside herself about
what happened to Tyler and his family,

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and she was gutted with pain

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in a way that I just couldn't
quite understand.

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And then eventually,
I realized she was reliving 1998,

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reliving a time when she sat
by my bed every night,

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reliving -- (Chokes up)

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Sorry -- reliving a time when she made me
shower with the bathroom door open,

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and reliving a time
when both of my parents feared

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that I would be humiliated to death,

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literally.

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Today, too many parents
haven't had the chance

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to step in and rescue their loved ones.

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Too many have learned
of their child's suffering and humiliation

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after it was too late.

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Tyler's tragic, senseless death
was a turning point for me.

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It served to recontextualize
my experiences,

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and I then began to look at the world
of humiliation and bullying around me

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and see something different.

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In 1998, we had no way of knowing

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where this brave new technology
called the internet would take us.

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Since then, it has connected people
in unimaginable ways --

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joining lost siblings,

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saving lives,

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launching revolutions ...

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But the darkness, cyberbullying,
and slut-shaming that I experienced

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had mushroomed.

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Every day online, people --
especially young people,

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who are not developmentally
equipped to handle this --

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are so abused and humiliated

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that they can't imagine living
to the next day.

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And some, tragically, don't.

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And there's nothing virtual about that.

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Childline, a UK nonprofit that's focused
on helping young people on various issues,

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released a staggering statistic
late last year:

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from 2012 to 2013,
there was an 87 percent increase

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in calls and e-mails
related to cyberbullying.

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A meta-analysis
done out of the Netherlands

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showed that for the first time,

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cyberbullying was leading
to suicidal ideations

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more significantly than offline bullying.

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And you know, what shocked me --
although it shouldn't have --

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was other research last year

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that determined humiliation
was a more intensely felt emotion

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than either happiness or even anger.

NOTE Paragraph

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Cruelty to others is nothing new.

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But online, technologically
enhanced shaming is amplified,

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uncontained

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and permanently accessible.

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The echo of embarrassment used to extend
only as far as your family, village,

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school or community.

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But now, it's the online community too.

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Millions of people, often anonymously,
can stab you with their words,

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and that's a lot of pain.

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And there are no perimeters around
how many people can publicly observe you

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and put you in a public stockade.

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There is a very personal price
to public humiliation,

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and the growth of the internet
has jacked up that price.

NOTE Paragraph

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For nearly two decades now,

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we have slowly been sowing the seeds
of shame and public humiliation

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in our cultural soil,
both on- and offline.

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Gossip websites, paparazzi,
reality programming, politics,

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news outlets and sometimes hackers

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all traffic in shame.

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It's led to desensitization
and a permissive environment online,

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which lends itself to trolling,
invasion of privacy and cyberbullying.

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This shift has created
what Professor Nicolaus Mills calls

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"a culture of humiliation."

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Consider a few prominent examples
just from the past six months alone.

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Snapchat, the service which is used
mainly by younger generations

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and claims that its messages
only have the life span of a few seconds.

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You can imagine the range
of content that that gets.

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A third-party app which Snapchatters use
to preserve the life span of the messages

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was hacked,

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and 100,000 personal conversations,
photos and videos were leaked online,

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to now have a life span of forever.

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Jennifer Lawrence and several other actors
had their iCloud accounts hacked,

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and private, intimate, nude photos
were plastered across the internet

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without their permission.

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One gossip website
had over five million hits

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for this one story.

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And what about
the Sony Pictures cyberhacking?

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The documents which received
the most attention

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were private e-mails that had
maximum public embarrassment value.

NOTE Paragraph

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But in this culture of humiliation,

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there is another kind of price tag
attached to public shaming.

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The price does not measure
the cost to the victim,

00:15:38.587 --> 00:15:40.930
which Tyler and too many others --

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notably, women, minorities
and members of the LGBTQ community --

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have paid,

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but the price measures the profit
of those who prey on them.

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This invasion of others is a raw material,

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efficiently and ruthlessly mined,
packaged and sold at a profit.

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A marketplace has emerged
where public humiliation is a commodity,

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and shame is an industry.

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How is the money made?

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Clicks.

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The more shame, the more clicks.

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The more clicks,
the more advertising dollars.

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We're in a dangerous cycle.

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The more we click on this kind of gossip,

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the more numb we get
to the human lives behind it.

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And the more numb we get,
the more we click.

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All the while,

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someone is making money off of the back
of someone else's suffering.

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With every click, we make a choice.

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The more we saturate our culture
with public shaming,

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the more accepted it is,

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the more we will see behavior
like cyberbullying, trolling,

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some forms of hacking

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and online harassment.

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Why? Because they all have
humiliation at their cores.

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This behavior is a symptom
of the culture we've created.

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Just think about it.

NOTE Paragraph

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Changing behavior begins
with evolving beliefs.

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We've seen that to be true
with racism, homophobia

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and plenty of other biases,

00:17:27.862 --> 00:17:29.633
today and in the past.

00:17:30.695 --> 00:17:33.719
As we've changed beliefs
about same-sex marriage,

00:17:33.743 --> 00:17:37.108
more people have been offered
equal freedoms.

00:17:37.978 --> 00:17:40.764
When we began valuing sustainability,

00:17:40.788 --> 00:17:42.827
more people began to recycle.

00:17:43.434 --> 00:17:46.932
So as far as our culture
of humiliation goes,

00:17:46.956 --> 00:17:49.603
what we need is a cultural revolution.

00:17:50.481 --> 00:17:54.250
Public shaming
as a blood sport has to stop,

00:17:54.274 --> 00:17:58.339
and it's time for an intervention
on the internet and in our culture.

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00:17:59.202 --> 00:18:01.642
The shift begins with something simple,

00:18:01.666 --> 00:18:03.010
but it's not easy.

00:18:03.985 --> 00:18:08.443
We need to return to a long-held
value of compassion,

00:18:08.467 --> 00:18:10.420
compassion and empathy.

00:18:11.071 --> 00:18:13.790
Online, we've got a compassion deficit,

00:18:13.814 --> 00:18:15.603
an empathy crisis.

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00:18:17.413 --> 00:18:20.779
Researcher Brené Brown said, and I quote,

00:18:20.803 --> 00:18:23.329
"Shame can't survive empathy."

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Shame cannot survive empathy.

00:18:30.515 --> 00:18:33.308
I've seen some very dark days in my life.

00:18:34.221 --> 00:18:40.089
It was the compassion and empathy
from my family, friends, professionals

00:18:41.002 --> 00:18:42.742
and sometimes even strangers

00:18:42.766 --> 00:18:44.305
that saved me.

00:18:45.345 --> 00:18:48.536
Even empathy from one person
can make a difference.

00:18:50.369 --> 00:18:52.733
The theory of minority influence,

00:18:52.757 --> 00:18:56.171
proposed by social psychologist
Serge Moscovici,

00:18:56.195 --> 00:18:58.801
says that even in small numbers,

00:18:58.825 --> 00:19:01.001
when there's consistency over time,

00:19:01.025 --> 00:19:02.575
change can happen.

00:19:03.794 --> 00:19:07.037
In the online world,
we can foster minority influence

00:19:07.061 --> 00:19:08.849
by becoming upstanders.

00:19:09.353 --> 00:19:13.150
To become an upstander means
instead of bystander apathy,

00:19:13.174 --> 00:19:17.764
we can post a positive comment for someone
or report a bullying situation.

00:19:18.230 --> 00:19:22.461
Trust me, compassionate comments
help abate the negativity.

00:19:23.202 --> 00:19:27.073
We can also counteract the culture
by supporting organizations

00:19:27.097 --> 00:19:29.174
that deal with these kinds of issues,

00:19:29.198 --> 00:19:31.982
like the Tyler Clementi
Foundation in the US;

00:19:32.780 --> 00:19:35.413
in the UK, there's Anti-Bullying Pro;

00:19:35.437 --> 00:19:38.099
and in Australia, there's PROJECT ROCKIT.

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We talk a lot about our right
to freedom of expression.

00:19:46.333 --> 00:19:49.410
But we need to talk more
about our responsibility

00:19:49.434 --> 00:19:51.186
to freedom of expression.

00:19:52.051 --> 00:19:54.296
We all want to be heard,

00:19:54.320 --> 00:19:59.080
but let's acknowledge the difference
between speaking up with intention

00:19:59.104 --> 00:20:01.856
and speaking up for attention.

00:20:03.493 --> 00:20:06.478
The internet is
the superhighway for the id.

00:20:07.597 --> 00:20:12.255
But online, showing empathy
to others benefits us all

00:20:12.279 --> 00:20:15.181
and helps create a safer and better world.

00:20:15.905 --> 00:20:18.957
We need to communicate
online with compassion,

00:20:18.981 --> 00:20:21.311
consume news with compassion

00:20:21.335 --> 00:20:23.409
and click with compassion.

00:20:24.114 --> 00:20:28.261
Just imagine walking a mile
in someone else's headline.

00:20:31.261 --> 00:20:34.246
I'd like to end on a personal note.

00:20:35.561 --> 00:20:37.365
In the past nine months,

00:20:37.389 --> 00:20:40.762
the question I've been
asked the most is "Why?"

00:20:40.786 --> 00:20:41.946
Why now?

00:20:41.970 --> 00:20:44.524
Why was I sticking my head
above the parapet?

00:20:45.193 --> 00:20:47.806
You can read between the lines
in those questions,

00:20:47.830 --> 00:20:50.587
and the answer has nothing
to do with politics.

00:20:51.471 --> 00:20:56.306
The top-note answer was and is
"Because it's time."

00:20:57.166 --> 00:21:00.007
Time to stop tiptoeing around my past,

00:21:00.031 --> 00:21:03.021
time to stop living a life of opprobrium

00:21:03.045 --> 00:21:05.430
and time to take back my narrative.

NOTE Paragraph

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It's also not just about saving myself.

00:21:11.003 --> 00:21:14.649
Anyone who is suffering from shame
and public humiliation

00:21:14.673 --> 00:21:16.446
needs to know one thing:

00:21:17.446 --> 00:21:19.169
You can survive it.

00:21:20.016 --> 00:21:21.416
I know it's hard.

00:21:22.572 --> 00:21:26.085
It may not be painless, quick or easy,

00:21:26.109 --> 00:21:30.041
but you can insist
on a different ending to your story.

00:21:30.942 --> 00:21:32.980
Have compassion for yourself.

00:21:34.270 --> 00:21:36.542
We all deserve compassion

00:21:37.390 --> 00:21:42.751
and to live both online and off
in a more compassionate world.

NOTE Paragraph

00:21:43.684 --> 00:21:45.181
Thank you for listening.

NOTE Paragraph

00:21:45.205 --> 00:21:52.077
(Applause and cheers)