Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

Monica Lewinsky: The Price of Shame

“Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop. I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.”

Monica Lewinsky

After nearly a decade of self-imposed silence, Monica Lewinsky is making herself heard. This time as an advocate against cyberbullying.

“Anyone who is suffering 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.”

Monica Lewinsky

In her TED2015 talk titled ‘The Price of Shame’, the 41-year-old former White House intern advocates for a safer and more compassionate social media environment, drawing from her unique experiences in 1998 and opens up about the Bill Clinton scandal in ways she has never done so before.

She says,

‘At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss. At the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences… Who didn’t make a mistake at 22? Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply. In 1998, after having been swept up in an improbable romance, I was then swept up into the eye of a political, legal, and media maelstrom like we had never seen before’

Monica Lewinsky

In the video Monica Lewinsky talks about how the internet changed her life…and changed media as we know it. 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.

Watch the video below.