I just watched an audience of educated and influential people give Monica Lewinsky a standing ovation — and that after her TED Talk brought tears to the eyes of some. Lewinski was not a public figure before 1998. Then she was. Then she wasn’t. But she is again because she has decided to champion the cause of empathy and compassion in our world where anyone can now publicly shame anyone globally on te Internet.
She asks in her talk if there is anyone in the audience who hasn’t done something in their life that they would be ashamed to have publicly paraded in the most unattractive manner. No hands rose in her audience.
"Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop," says Monica Lewinsky. In 1998, she says, “I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.” Today, the kind of online public shaming she went through has become constant -- and can turn deadly. In a brave talk, she takes a hard look at our online culture of humiliation, and asks for a different way.
Please watch this TED Talk and look beyond the titilation of the situation that brought her infamy. Like many who have endured horrible suffering, she is trying to tell us that we need to not allow it to happen to others.
Watch her Ted Talk here: The Price of Shame
Herb