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

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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,

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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

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from rap songs.

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Yes, I'm in rap songs.

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Almost 40 rap songs. (Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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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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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) (Applause)

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I realized later that night,
I'm probably the only person over 40

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who does not want to be 22 again.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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, your boss

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

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Of course, life is full of surprises.

NOTE Paragraph

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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

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was usurped by the Internet
for a major news story,

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a click that reverberated
around the world.

NOTE Paragraph

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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

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on a global scale 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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email stories, and, of course,
email 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,

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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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But the attention and judgment
that I received, not the story,

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but that I personally received,
was unprecedented.

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I was branded as a tramp,

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tart, slut, whore, 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, 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 cyber-bullying
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 that results

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in less suffering for others.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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 listened,

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listened 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,

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to the worst version of myself,

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a self I don't even recognize.

NOTE Paragraph

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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 audio tapes 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 make 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

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in September of 2010,

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and we were talking about the news

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of a young college freshman
from Rutgers University

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named Tyler Clemente.

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Sweet, sensitive, creative Tyler

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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 cyber-bullying 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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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

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she was reliving 1998,

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

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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Today, too many parents

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haven't had the chance 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
where this brave new technology

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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, launching revolutions,

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but the darkness, cyber-bullying,
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 U.K. nonprofit that's focused

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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,

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there was an 87 percent increase

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in calls and emails related
to cyber-bullying.

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A meta-analysis done
out of the Netherlands

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showed that for the first time,
cyberbullying was leading

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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
that determined humiliation

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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, 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,

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can stab you with their words,
and that's a lot of pain,

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and there are no perimeters
around how many people

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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

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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 cyber-bullying.

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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 lifespan

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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 lifespan

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of the messages 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 lifespan 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
cyber-hacking?

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The documents which received
the most attention

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were private emails 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,

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which Tyler and too many others,

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notably women, minorities,

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and members of the LGBTQ
community 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, someone is making money

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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 cyber-bullying,

00:16:58.148 --> 00:17:00.795
trolling, some forms of hacking,

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and online harassment.

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Why? Because they all have
humiliation at the 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,

00:17:26.150 --> 00:17:30.100
and plenty of other biases,
today and in the past.

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As we've changed beliefs
about same sex marriage,

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more people have been
offered equal freedoms.

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When we began valuing sustainability,

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more people began to recycle.

00:17:43.681 --> 00:17:46.956
So as far as our culture
of humiliation goes,

00:17:46.956 --> 00:17:50.601
what we need is a cultural revolution.

00:17:50.601 --> 00:17:54.524
Public shaming
as a blood sport has to stop,

00:17:54.524 --> 00:17:59.401
and it's time for an intervention
on the Internet and in our culture.

NOTE Paragraph

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The shift begins with something simple,
but it's not easy.

00:18:04.137 --> 00:18:10.772
We need to return to a long-held value
of compassion, compassion and empathy.

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Online, we've got a compassion deficit,

00:18:13.959 --> 00:18:16.021
an empathy crisis.

NOTE Paragraph

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Researcher Brené Brown said, and I quote,

00:18:20.995 --> 00:18:24.571
"Shame can't survive empathy."

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Shame cannot survive empathy.

00:18:30.515 --> 00:18:34.136
I've seen some very dark days in my life,

00:18:34.136 --> 00:18:40.197
and it was the compassion and empathy
from my family, friends, professionals,

00:18:40.197 --> 00:18:44.273
and sometimes even strangers
that saved me.

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Even empathy from one person
can make a difference.

00:18:50.318 --> 00:18:52.991
The theory of minority influence,

00:18:52.991 --> 00:18:56.195
proposed by social psychologist
Serge Moscovici,

00:18:56.195 --> 00:18:58.981
says that even in small numbers,

00:18:58.981 --> 00:19:01.233
when there's consistency over time,

00:19:01.233 --> 00:19:03.834
change can happen.

00:19:03.834 --> 00:19:07.061
In the online world,
we can foster minority influence

00:19:07.061 --> 00:19:09.488
by becoming upstanders.

00:19:09.488 --> 00:19:13.214
To become an upstander means
instead of bystander apathy,

00:19:13.214 --> 00:19:18.452
we can post a positive comment for someone
or report a bullying situation.

00:19:18.452 --> 00:19:22.605
Trust me: compassionate comments
help abate the negativity.

00:19:23.385 --> 00:19:27.193
We can also counteract the culture
by supporting organizations

00:19:27.193 --> 00:19:29.469
that deal with these kinds of issues,

00:19:29.469 --> 00:19:32.277
like the Tyler Clemente
Foundation in the U.S.,

00:19:32.277 --> 00:19:35.088
In the U.K., there's Anti-Bullying Pro,

00:19:35.088 --> 00:19:40.450
and in Australia, there's Project Rockit.

NOTE Paragraph

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

00:19:46.157 --> 00:19:48.182
but we need to talk more about

00:19:48.182 --> 00:19:51.736
our responsibility
to freedom of expression.

00:19:51.736 --> 00:19:54.475
We all want to be heard,

00:19:54.475 --> 00:19:59.258
but let's acknowledge the difference
between speaking up with intention

00:19:59.258 --> 00:20:02.374
and speaking up for attention.

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The Internet is 
the superhighway for the id,

00:20:07.222 --> 00:20:10.380
but online, showing empathy to others

00:20:10.380 --> 00:20:15.930
benefits us all and helps create
a safer and better world.

00:20:15.930 --> 00:20:19.134
We need to communicate
online with compassion,

00:20:19.134 --> 00:20:21.595
consume news with compassion,

00:20:21.595 --> 00:20:24.289
and click with compassion.

00:20:24.289 --> 00:20:28.923
Just imagine walking a mile
in someone else's headline.

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I'd like to end on a personal note.

00:20:35.561 --> 00:20:37.651
In the past nine months,

00:20:37.651 --> 00:20:41.175
the question I've been 
asked the most is why.

00:20:41.175 --> 00:20:45.193
Why now? Why was I 
sticking my head above the parapet?

00:20:45.193 --> 00:20:47.710
You can read between the lines
in those questions,

00:20:47.710 --> 00:20:51.559
and the answer has nothing
to do with politics.

00:20:51.559 --> 00:20:54.718
The top node answer was and is

00:20:54.718 --> 00:20:57.226
because it's time:

00:20:57.226 --> 00:20:59.873
time to stop tip-toeing around my past;

00:20:59.873 --> 00:21:03.115
time to stop living a life of opprobrium;

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and time to take back my narrative.

NOTE Paragraph

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It's also not just about saving myself.

00:21:11.194 --> 00:21:14.607
Anyone who is suffering from shame
and public humiliation

00:21:14.607 --> 00:21:17.394
needs to know one thing:

00:21:17.394 --> 00:21:20.111
you can survive it.

00:21:20.111 --> 00:21:22.874
I know it's hard.

00:21:22.874 --> 00:21:26.505
It may not be painless, quick, or easy,

00:21:26.505 --> 00:21:31.181
but you can insist
on a different ending to your story.

00:21:31.181 --> 00:21:34.548
Have compassion for yourself.

00:21:34.548 --> 00:21:37.636
We all deserve compassion,

00:21:37.636 --> 00:21:43.835
and to live both online and off
in a more compassionate world.

NOTE Paragraph

00:21:43.835 --> 00:21:46.435
Thank you for listening.

NOTE Paragraph

00:21:46.435 --> 00:21:56.815
(Applause)