The price of shame

The woman standing in front of you has been silent for ten years in front of the public. Obviously, it is different now, but this is only the latest thing. A few months ago, at the Forbes "30 Under 30 Entrepreneur" summit, I gave my first public speech. There were 1,500 outstanding people at the summit, all less than 30 years old. This means that in 1998, the oldest of them was only 14 years old, and the youngest was only 4 years old. I am joking with them. Some people seem to have just heard my name from rap music. Yes, rap music sang me, there are almost 40 such rap music.

The accident happened on the night of my speech. As a 41-year-old woman, there was a 27-year-old boy who hooked me up. I know, it's hard to believe? He is very charming, and he said a lot of flattering words. I refused. Do you know where his unsuccessful conversation is? He said that he can make me feel back to 22 years old... I realized that night, I don’t want to go back to 22 when I was 40, maybe I am only. When I was 22, I fell in love with my boss. At the age of 24, I understood the devastating consequences.

Can you please raise your hand and tell me that if you feel that you have not made a mistake when you were 22 years old and have not done anything to regret yourself, please raise your hand? Like I thought, like me, at the age of 22, you are Some people have probably made mistakes, loved the wrong person, and perhaps your boss. But unlike me, your boss is not a US president. Of course, life is full of surprises. Every day I am reminded of this mistake, I regret deeply every day.

After being involved in an impossible love in 1998, I was involved in the whirlpool of politics, law, and media, a whirlpool never seen before. Remember, just a few years ago, there were only three sources of news: reading newspapers and magazines, listening to the radio, and watching TV. But my life is not so good, this scandal was made public through the digital revolution. The digital revolution means we can get all the information we want, when and where. The scandal was first revealed in January 1998 through the Internet. This is the first time that traditional media has been preempted by the Internet in major incident reports, and the sound of one click has been heard all over the world.

For me personally, it made me one night from a completely unnamed person to an object that was publicly humiliated by the whole world. I became a patient with zero, the first experience of how to instantly lose my personal reputation on a global scale.

This sloppy moral trial promoted by technology led me to be besieged by stone-throwing mobs in the online world. Admittedly, this is before the advent of social media, but people can still comment online, forward the story, and, of course, forward cruel jokes. The news media posted my photos everywhere, selling newspapers, attracting advertisers to the site, and attracting attention to the TV.

Remember my photo? The one wearing a beret? I confess that I made a mistake, especially if I don't wear that beret. In addition to paying attention to the story, people's personal attention and moral judgments are unprecedented. I have been labeled as sluts, prostitutes, bitches, nephews, monks, and of course "the woman." Many people have seen me, but few people know me. I understand that it is easy for people to forget that a woman is multi-dimensional. In fact, she also has a soul and she is always intact. 17 years ago, these things happened to me without a special term. Now, we call it cyberbullying and online harassment.

Today, I want to share some personal experiences with you. I want to talk about how these experiences have shaped my cultural observations. I hope that my past experiences can lead to change and make others less bullied. I lost my reputation and dignity in 1998, and I almost lost everything, including life. Let me paint it for you. This is in September 1998, I was sitting in a windowless office. Under the squeaking fluorescent light in the office of the independent prosecutor, I listened to my voice. This is a The voice of the phone was intercepted before the year, the recorder, I used to be a friend. I sat there because of legal requirements, I have to personally identify all twenty hours of conversation recordings. For the past eight months, the mysterious content of these tapes has been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. Think about who can remember what he said a year ago. I was very scared and listened very humiliatingly. Listening to my own leisure time, I was listening to my own confession of the president’s love. Of course, there is my heartbreak. I heard that sometimes, irritating, sometimes stupid, me - ruthless, vengeful, rude. I listened, I was deeply ashamed, this is the worst of me, so bad that I don’t know myself.

A few days later the Starr report was submitted to Congress, and all the recordings and originals, all the stolen words, became part of it. It is already scary for people to be able to read the original manuscript, but it is not over. After a few weeks, the tape has been made public on TV, and a large part of it has been distributed online. This kind of public humiliation is tormenting people, and life is almost unbearable. This situation was not common in 1998. "This situation" refers to stealing people's private words, actions, dialogues or photographs to make them public - without public consent and without ins and outs. Open, not sympathetic disclosure.

Fast-forward 12 to 2019, social media has emerged, and examples like me are starting to grow, even if the parties have made mistakes. Moreover, public figures and ordinary people have suffered greatly, and the results of some incidents are very tragic.

In September 2019, I made a phone call with my mother. We talked about a news about a college freshman at Rutgers University. His name is Taylor Clementi. The friendly, sensitive and creative Taylor was photographed by roommates and intimate with another man. The video was spread to the Internet, and the fire of ridicule and cyberbullying was ignited. A few days later, Taylor jumped from the George Washington Bridge... Life died like this... He is only 18 years old.

My mother was very excited when she talked about Taylor and his family. She was suffering from her heart. I was still unable to understand at the time, but I gradually realized that she was re-experiencing when she re-experienced her sitting on my bed every night in 1998 and re-experienced when she let me take a shower without closing the door. She and her father worried that I would die because of humiliation. Not exaggerating at all.

Nowadays, many parents have not had time to intervene to save their beloved children. Many parents are too late to know the pain and humiliation of their children. Taylor’s tragedy and unnecessary death is a turning point for me. It allowed me to re-examine my personal experience and let me start thinking about the world full of humiliation and bullying, and let me see something different.

In 1998, no one knew where the new technology of the Internet would lead humans. Since its inception, the Internet has enabled humans to connect in unimaginable ways, allowing people to find lost brothers and sisters, save lives, and initiate revolutions. At the same time, however, the dark side, cyberbullying and insults that I have experienced have also mushroomed. Every day on the Internet, there are always people, especially young people who are still immature and do not know how to deal with them. They are always so bullied and humiliated that they feel that they cannot live until the next day, and some people are indeed tragically killed. This is not virtual.

ChildLine is a British nonprofit organization dedicated to helping young people deal with a variety of issues. Last year, the organization released an amazing statistical result. From 2012 to 2019, telephone and email related to cyberbullying increased by 87%. A comprehensive analysis from the Netherlands showed for the first time that cyberbullying is more likely to lead to suicidal ideation than offline bullying. I was shocked by another study last year. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. The study shows that humiliation is a stronger emotion than happiness and even anger. Cruelty to others is not new, but online, the humiliation of technology promotion will be magnified, unchecked and can always be seen. Traditional shame is limited to families, villages, schools, or communities, but now it extends to online communities. Millions of people can attack you anonymously with words, which can be very painful, and there is no limit to the people who can publicly see these attacks. Being publicly humiliated is very damaging to the individual, and the spread of the Internet has greatly increased this damage.

In the past two decades, we have gradually planted seeds of humiliation and public insult in the soil of culture. Whether online or offline, gossip sites, paparazzi, live-action shows, politics, news reports, and even hackers are all channels of humiliation. An insensitive, pervasive network environment makes Internet swaying, privacy violations, and cyberbullying increasingly rampant. This transformation created the “humiliation culture” that Professor Nicholas Mills called.

Looking at some notable examples, these are only the last six months. " Snapchat" This service is mainly used by young people, claiming that their content will be burned after reading. The information will only exist for a few seconds. Imagine what kind of content this will involve. The third-party application used by Snapchat users to retain information for a long time was invaded. The personal conversations, photos, and videos of 100,000 people were leaked to the Internet, and the lifespan of these contents became forever. Jennifer Lawrence and several other actors' iCloud accounts were hacked, and private private nude photos were spread to the Internet without any permission. A gossip website received more than five million hits just because of this content. Think again about the Sony Pictures hacking attack, the most concerned document, turned out to be the public humiliation of some of the most valuable private mail. In this culture of shame, public humiliation is also labeled as another price tag. It is not measured how much damage the victim has suffered, such as Taylor, and many people, especially women, minorities and multiple genders. Members of the group. The price tag here measures the profits of the profit-seekers, and invading others' private spheres becomes a raw material that is ruthlessly excavated, packaged, and sold by these people. A market is born, and public humiliation becomes a commodity among them.

Shame has become an industry. How to make money? Click. The more humiliation, the more clicks, the more clicks, the more advertising costs. This is a dangerous cycle. The more we click on these gossip, the more numb we will be to the people behind the story, the more we are numb, the more we will click. From beginning to end, some people are using the pain of others to make profits. Every time we click, we are making choices. The more public humiliation the culture is, the more accepted it is, the more we will see cyberbullying, Internet incitement, hacking, and online harassment. Why? Because their core is humiliation, this behavior has become a cultural symptom we have created.

Changing behavior begins with changing beliefs, whether racial or homosexual, and many of the current and past discriminations are eliminated. As the concept of same-sex marriage changes, more people are given equal freedom. With the advocacy of sustainability, more and more people are beginning to recycle. The culture of humiliation should also be like this. We need a cultural revolution, and public humiliation of this bloody entertainment should be terminated. Whether it is on the Internet or in culture, it is time to intervene.

Transformation can start with simple things, but it is not simple in itself. We need to return to the inherent value of human beings, that is, compassion and empathy. The Internet is experiencing a lack of compassion and empathy. Citing the researcher Brin Brown, "humiliation can't survive under empathy."

I have experienced some unusually dark days in my life. It is the compassion and empathy of my family, friends, professionals and even some strangers who have saved me, even if only one person understands it. The niche influence theory put forward by social psychologist Sergey Moskovic believes that even if it is a minority group, as long as it can persist, changes can happen. In the online world, we can stand up to nurture niche influences, stand up and say no longer indifference, but publish positive comments to support victims or report bullying. Believe me, compassionate comments can reduce negative effects, and we can also fight this culture of shame by supporting organizations that deal with such issues. For example, the United States has the Taylor Clementi Foundation, the United Kingdom has an anti-bullying project, and Australia has a Rockit project.

We often refer to the right to freedom of expression, and we should also talk more about our responsibility for freedom of expression. We all want our voice to be heard, but we need to distinguish between vocalizations with intent and voices that ask for attention. The Internet is a super highway that expresses itself. However, thinking about the situation of others on the Internet is beneficial to everyone and can help create a safer and better world. We need to communicate online with compassion, read the news with compassion, and click on the website with compassion.

Imagine living in someone else's headlines.

Finally, I want to conclude with a personal statement. The question I have been asked the most in the past nine months is why, why now, why do I have to make this head. You should be able to hear the implication of these questions. The answer has nothing to do with politics.

My answer is: Because it is time, it is time to be cautious about the past, it is time to live without shame, it is time to tell your own experience. This is not just to save myself. Anyone who suffers from shame and public humiliation needs to know a little - you can support it. I know it is very difficult, it will definitely be painful, and certainly will not come easily. But you can stick to it and write a different story ending. We sympathize with ourselves, we all deserve sympathy, whether online or offline, we all need to live in a more compassionate world.