The price of shame
You're looking at a woman who was publicly silent for a decade. Obviously, that's changed, but only recently. It was several months ago that I gave my very first major public talk at the Forbes 30 Under 30 summit:1,500 brilliant people, all under the age of 30. That meant that in 1998, the oldest among the group were only 14, and the youngest, just four. I joked with them that some might only have heard of me from rap songs. Yes, I'm in rap songs. Almost 40 rap songs. But the night of my speech, a surprising thing happened. At the age of 41, I was hit on by a 27-year-old guy. I know, right? He was charming and I was flattered, and I declined. You know what his unsuccessful pickup line was? He could make me feel 22 again. I realized later that night, I'm probably the only person over 40 who does not want to be 22 again. At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss, and at the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences.Can I see a show of hands of anyone here who didn't make a mistake or do something they regretted at 22? Yep. That's what I thought. So like me, at 22, a few of you may have also taken wrong turns and fallen in love with the wrong person, maybe even your boss. Unlike me, though, your boss probably wasn't the president of the United States of America. Of course, life is full of surprises. Not a day goes by that I'm not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply. In 1998, after having been swept up into an improbable romance, I was then swept up into the eye of a political, legal and media maelstrom like we had never seen before. Remember, just a few years earlier,news was consumed from just three places: reading a newspaper or magazine, listening to the radio, or watching television. That was it. But that wasn't my fate. Instead, this scandal was brought to you by the digital revolution. That meant we could access all the information we wanted, when we wanted it, anytime, anywhere, and when the story broke in January 1998, it broke online. It was the first time the traditional news was usurped by the Internet for a major news story, a click that reverberated around the world. What that meant for me personally was that overnight I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously. This rush to judgment, enabled by technology, led to mobs of virtual stone-throwers. Granted, it was before social media, but people could still comment online, email stories, and, of course, email cruel jokes. News sources plastered photos of me all over to sell newspapers, banner ads online, and to keep people tuned to the TV. Do you recall a particular image of me, say, wearing a beret? Now, I admit I made mistakes, especially wearing that beret. But the attention and judgment that I received, not the story, but that I personally received, was unprecedented. I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and, of course, that woman. I was seen by many but actually known by few. And I get it: it was easy to forget that that woman was dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken.When this happened to me 17 years ago, there was no name for it. Now we call it cyberbullying and online harassment. Today, I want to share some of my experience with you, talk about how that experience has helped shape my cultural observations, and how I hope my past experience can lead to a change that results in less suffering for others. In 1998, I lost my reputation and my dignity. I lost almost everything, and I almost lost my life. Let me paint a picture for you. It is September of 1998. I'm sitting in a windowless office room inside the Office of the Independent Counsel underneath humming fluorescent lights. I'm listening to the sound of my voice, my voice on surreptitiously taped phone calls that a supposed friend had made the year before. I'm here because I've been legally required to personally authenticate all 20 hours of taped conversation. For the past eight months, the mysterious content of these tapes has hung like the Sword of Damocles over my head. I mean, who can remember what they said a year ago? Scared and mortified, I listen, listen as I prattle on about the flotsam and jetsam of the day; listen as I confess my love for the president, and, of course, my heartbreak; listen to my sometimes catty, sometimes churlish, sometimes silly self being cruel, unforgiving, uncouth; listen, deeply, deeply ashamed, to the worst version of myself,a self I don't even recognize. A few days later, the Starr Report is released to Congress, and all of those tapes and trans, those stolen words, form a part of it. That people can read the trans is horrific enough, but a few weeks later, the audio tapes are aired on TV, and significant portions made available online. The public humiliation was excruciating. Life was almost unbearable. This was not something that happened with regularity back then in 1998, and by this, I mean the stealing of people's private words, actions, conversations or photos, and then making them public -- public without consent, public without context, and public without compassion. Fast forward 12 years to 2010, and now social media has been born. The landscape has sadly become much more populated with instances like mine, whether or not someone actually make a mistake, and now it's for both public and private people. The consequences for some have become dire, very dire. I was on the phone with my mom in September of 2010, and we were talking about the news of a young college freshman from Rutgers University named Tyler Clementi. Sweet, sensitive, creative Tyler was secretly webcammed by his roommate while being intimate with another man. When the online world learned of this incident, the ridicule and cyberbullying ignited. A few days later, Tyler jumped from the George Washington Bridge to his death. He was 18.My mom was beside herself about what happened to Tyler and his family, and she was gutted with painin a way that I just couldn't quite understand, and then eventually I realized she was reliving 1998, reliving a time when she sat by my bed every night, reliving a time when she made me shower with the bathroom door open, and reliving a time when both of my parents feared that I would be humiliated to death,literally. Today, too many parents haven't had the chance to step in and rescue their loved ones. Too many have learned of their child's suffering and humiliation after it was too late. Tyler's tragic, senseless death was a turning point for me. It served to recontextualize my experiences, and I then began to look at the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see something different. In 1998, we had no way of knowing where this brave new technology called the Internet would take us. Since then, it has connected people in unimaginable ways, joining lost siblings, saving lives, launching revolutions, but the darkness, cyberbullying, and slut-shaming that I experienced had mushroomed. Every day online, people, especially young people who are not developmentally equipped to handle this, are so abused and humiliated that they can't imagine living to the next day, and some, tragically, don't, and there's nothing virtual about that. ChildLine, a U.K. nonprofit that's focused on helping young people on various issues,released a staggering statistic late last year: From 2012 to 2013, there was an 87 percent increase in calls and emails related to cyberbullying. A meta-analysis done out of the Netherlands showed that for the first time, cyberbullying was leading to suicidal ideations more significantly than offline bullying. And you know what shocked me, although it shouldn't have, was other research last year that determined humiliation was a more intensely felt emotion than either happiness or even anger.Cruelty to others is nothing new, but online, technologically enhanced shaming is amplified, uncontained, and permanently accessible. The echo of embarrassment used to extend only as far as your family, village, school or community, but now it's the online community too. Millions of people, often anonymously, can stab you with their words, and that's a lot of pain, and there are no perimeters around how many people can publicly observe you and put you in a public stockade. There is a very personal price to public humiliation, and the growth of the Internet has jacked up that price. For nearly two decades now, we have slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil, both on- and offline. Gossip websites, paparazzi, reality programming, politics, news outlets and sometimes hackers all traffic in shame. It's led to desensitization and a permissive environment online which lends itself to trolling, invasion of privacy, and cyberbullying. This shift has created what Professor Nicolaus Mills calls a culture of humiliation. Consider a few prominent examples just from the past six months alone. Snapchat, the service which is used mainly by younger generationsand claims that its messages only have the lifespan of a few seconds. You can imagine the range of content that that gets. A third-party app which Snapchatters use to preserve the lifespan of the messages was hacked, and 100,000 personal conversations, photos, and videos were leaked online to now have a lifespan of forever. Jennifer Lawrence and several other actors had their iCloud accounts hacked, and private, intimate, nude photos were plastered across the Internet without their permission.One gossip website had over five million hits for this one story. And what about the Sony Pictures cyberhacking? The documents which received the most attention were private emails that had maximum public embarrassment value. But in this culture of humiliation, there is another kind of price tag attached to public shaming. The price does not measure the cost to the victim, which Tyler and too many others, notably women, minorities,and members of the LGBTQ community have paid, but the price measures the profit of those who prey on them. This invasion of others is a raw material, efficiently and ruthlessly mined, packaged and sold at a profit. A marketplace has emerged where public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry.How is the money made? Clicks. The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars. We're in a dangerous cycle. The more we click on this kind of gossip, the more numb we get to the human lives behind it, and the more numb we get, the more we click. All the while, someone is making money off of the back of someone else's suffering. With every click, we make a choice. The more we saturate our culture with public shaming, the more accepted it is, the more we will see behavior like cyberbullying, trolling, some forms of hacking, and online harassment. Why? Because they all have humiliation at their cores. This behavior is a symptom of the culture we've created. Just think about it. Changing behavior begins with evolving beliefs. We've seen that to be true with racism, homophobia, and plenty of other biases, today and in the past. As we've changed beliefs about same-sex marriage, more people have been offered equal freedoms. When we began valuing sustainability, more people began to recycle. So as far as our culture of humiliation goes, what we need is a cultural revolution. Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop, and it's time for an intervention on the Internet and in our culture. The shift begins with something simple, but it's not easy. We need to return to a long-held value of compassion -- compassion and empathy. Online, we've got a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis. Researcher Brené Brown said, and I quote, "Shame can't survive empathy." Shame cannot survive empathy. I've seen some very dark days in my life, and it was the compassion and empathy from my family, friends, professionals, and sometimes even strangers that saved me. Even empathy from one person can make a difference. The theory of minority influence, proposed by social psychologist Serge Moscovici, says that even in small numbers, when there's consistency over time, change can happen. In the online world, we can foster minority influence by becoming upstanders. To become an upstander means instead of bystander apathy, we can post a positive comment for someone or report a bullying situation. Trust me, compassionate comments help abate the negativity. We can also counteract the culture by supporting organizations that deal with these kinds of issues, like the Tyler Clementi Foundation in the U.S., In the U.K., there's Anti-Bullying Pro, and in Australia, there's Project Rockit. We talk a lot about our right to freedom of expression, but we need to talk more about our responsibility to freedom of expression. We all want to be heard, but let's acknowledge the difference between speaking up with intention and speaking up for attention. The Internet is the superhighway for the id, but online, showing empathy to others benefits us all and helps create a safer and better world. We need to communicate online with compassion, consume news with compassion, and click with compassion. Just imagine walking a mile in someone else's headline. I'd like to end on a personal note. In the past nine months, the question I've been asked the most is why. Why now? Why was I sticking my head above the parapet? You can read between the lines in those questions, and the answer has nothing to do with politics. The top note answer was and is because it's time: time to stop tip-toeing around my past; time to stop living a life of opprobrium; and time to take back my narrative. It's also not just about saving myself. 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. Have compassion for yourself. We all deserve compassion, and to live both online and off in a more compassionate world. Thank you for listening.
莫妮卡·莱温斯基
主讲人：莫妮卡 莱温斯基 主题：耻辱的代价
时间：2015年3月19日 主办：Ted大会 【编者按】
17年前白宫性丑闻事件的当事人，前白宫实习生莫妮卡 莱温斯基在沉默了十年之后，走上Ted大会的讲台，呼吁抵制网络欺凌。 “22岁时，我爱上了我的老板；24岁的时，我饱受了这场恋爱带来的灾难性的后果。” 莱温斯基在演讲中表示，互联网让她成为全世界羞辱的对象。在饱受网络欺凌之苦之后，她决定站出来，对网络暴利说不。
以下是澎湃新闻(www.thepaper.cn)对莱温斯基演讲内容的翻译：
站在你们面前的是一个在大众面前沉默了十年之久的女人。当然，现在情况不一样了，不过这只是最近发生的事。
几个月前，我在《福布斯》杂志举办的“30岁以下”峰会（Under 30 Summit）上发表了首次公开演讲。现场1500位才华横溢的与会者都不到30岁。这意味着1998年，他们中最年长的是14岁，而最年轻的只有4岁。我跟他们开玩笑道，他们中有些人可能只在说唱歌曲里听到过我的名字。是的，大约有40首说唱歌曲唱过我。
但是，在我演讲当晚，发生了一件令人吃惊的事——我作为一个41岁的女人，被一个27岁的男孩示爱。我知道，这听上去不太可能对吧？他很迷人，说了很多恭维我的话，然后我拒绝了他。
你知道他为何搭讪失败吗？他说，他可以让我感到又回到了22岁。后来，那晚我意识到，也许我是年过40岁的女人中唯一一个不想重返22岁的人。
22岁时，我爱上了我的老板；24岁的时，我饱受了这场恋爱带来的灾难性的后果。 现场的观众们，如果你们在22岁的时候没有犯过错，或者没有做过让自己后悔的事，请举起手好吗？是的，和我想的一样。
与我一样，22岁时，你们中有一些人也曾走过弯路，爱上了不该爱的人，也许是你们的老板。但与我不同的是，你们的老板可能不会是美国总统。当然，人生充满惊奇。 之后的每一天，我都会想起自己所犯的错误，并为之深深感到后悔。 饱受网络欺凌之苦
1998年，在卷入一场不可思议的恋情后，我又被卷入了一场前所未有的政治、法律和舆论漩涡的中心。
记得吗？几年前，新闻一般通过三个途径传播：读报纸杂志、听广播、和看电视，仅此而已。但我的命运并不是仅此而已。这桩丑闻是通过数字革命传播的。这意味着我们可以获取任何我们需要的信息，不论何时何地。 这则新闻在1998年1月爆发时，它也在互联网上火了。这是互联网第一次在重大新闻事件报道中超越了传统媒体。只要轻点一下鼠标，就会在全世界引起反响。
对我个人而言，这则新闻让我一夜之间从一个无名小卒变成了全世界人民公开羞辱的对象。我成了第一个经历在全世界范围内名誉扫地的“零号病人”。
科技是这场草率审判的始作俑者，无数暴民向我投掷石块。当然，那时还没有社交媒体，但人们依然可以在网上发表评论，通过电子邮件传播新闻和残酷的玩笑。新闻媒体贴满了我的照片，借此来兜售报纸，为网页吸引广告商，提高电视收视率。记得当时的那张照片吗？我戴着贝雷帽的照片。
现在，我承认我犯了错，特别是不该戴那顶贝雷帽。但是，除了事件本身，我因此受到的关注和审判是前所未有的。我被贴上“淫妇”、“妓女”，“荡妇”，“婊子”，“蠢女人”的标签，当然，还有“那个女人”。许多人看到了我，但很少有人真正了解我。对此我表示理解，因为人们很容易忘记“那个女人”也是一个活生生的人，她也有灵魂，她也曾过着平静的生活。
17年前，对于我经历的这些遭遇还没有一个专有名词。现在，我们称之为“网络欺凌”和“网上骚扰”。今天我要与你们分享一些我的经历，我想谈谈那次经历是如何形成了我的文化观察，我希望我过去的经历能够产生一些改变，减少他人的痛苦。
1998年，我失去了名誉和尊严。我几乎失去了所有，我几乎失去了我的人生。
丑闻爆发之后，铺天盖地都是对此事件的报道。
让我来描绘这样一幅场景：1998年9月的一天，我坐在美国独立检察官办公室一间没有窗的屋子里，头顶上的日光灯嗡嗡作响。我正在听我的录音，那是一位所谓的朋友偷偷录下的电话谈话。我被依法要求鉴定那20个小时的电话录音是真实的。在过去的八个月里，这些录音带中神秘的内容就像一把悬在我头顶的达摩克利斯之剑。我的意思是，有谁会记得自己一年前说过的话？
在恐惧和羞愧中，我听着录音，听我闲扯每天发生的琐碎之事；听我坦白对总统的爱慕，当然，还有我的心碎；听有时尖酸，有时粗鲁，有时愚蠢的我是如何冷酷，无情，无理取闹。我带着深深的羞愧听着那个最糟糕的我的声音，糟糕到我自己都不认识了。 几天后，斯塔尔报告提交至国会，那些录音带和文字记录，那些被窃取的言语，都是这份报告的一部分。人们能够读到这些文字对我来说已经够恐怖了，但是几个星期后，那些录音又在电视上播放，有一些重要的内容还被发布在网络上。公开的羞辱让我饱受折磨。这样的生活让我几乎无法忍受。
在1998年，我所说的这些还并不常见。我指的是窃取他人私下的言语、行动、谈话内容和照片，并公之于众——在未经本人同意，未交待背景的情况下，毫无恻隐之心地将这些内容公之于众。
快进到12年后的2010年，社交媒体诞生了。可悲的是，社交媒体上充斥着更多像我这样的例子，不管这个当事人是不是真的犯了错，而且，公众人物和普罗大众都深受其害。对于有些人来说，后果是严重的，非常严重。
2010年9月的一天，我正在和我的母亲通电话，我们在讨论一则新闻，关于罗格斯大学的一个名叫泰勒 克莱门蒂的大一新生。可爱、敏感、富有创意的克莱门蒂被室友偷拍到和另一个男人有亲密关系。当这个视频在网络世界曝光后，嘲笑和网络欺凌的火种被点燃。几天后，泰勒从乔治华盛顿大桥上纵身跳下。一个年仅18岁的生命就这样逝去。
我母亲在讲到泰勒和他的家人时情绪有些失控，她所表现出的痛苦让我并不十分理解。后来，我才终于意识到，她正在重新经历1998年发生的一切。重新经历她每晚坐在我的床头的时候；重新经历她要我开着浴室门洗澡的时候，重新经历她和父亲担心我会因为受到羞辱而自寻短见的时候。真的是这样。
今天，太多父母没有机会及时介入来拯救他们挚爱的孩子。太多的人，当他们获悉自己的孩子的痛苦和受到的羞辱时，已为时已晚。
泰勒悲惨而毫无意义的死亡对我来说是一个转折点。他让我开始重新审视我的亲身经历，他让我开始观察身边这个充满羞辱和欺凌的世界，让我看到了不同的东西。
1998年，没有人知道这种名叫“因特网”的新技术会把人类带向何方。自诞生以来，因特网用难以想象的方式将人类联系起来。它让人们找到失散的兄弟姐妹、拯救生命、发起革命，但是我所遭受的黑暗、网络欺凌和被称为“荡妇”的羞辱也如雨后春笋般疯长。 每天，在网络上都会有人，特别是年轻人被辱骂和羞辱，而他们对此束手无策。这些辱骂和羞辱让他们想立刻死去。悲剧的是，有些人，真的因此死去。这一点儿也不虚拟。 ChildLine是英国一个致力于帮助年轻人解决各种问题的公益组织。去年年底，该组织公布了一组令人震惊的数据：从2012年到2013年，与网络欺凌有关的电话和邮件数量增加了87%。一份来自荷兰的综合分析首次披露，网络欺凌比线下欺凌更容易让人产生自杀的念头。去年，还有一项研究让我震惊，尽管我并不该感到震惊。研究显示，羞辱是比快乐或者生气更为强烈的情绪。
残忍对待他人不是什么新鲜事，但是，在互联网上，技术让羞辱放大，一发而不可收，并且永远可以被看到。
过去，丑闻最多在你的家庭、村庄、学校或者社区传播。但是现在也在网络社区流传。数百万的网民，经常匿名地恶语相向，这带来很多痛苦。而且，到底有多少人可以公开地关注你，让你成为众矢之的？这是无法计算的。被公开羞辱对个人而言代价很大，而互联网的发展加剧了这种代价。 近20年来，我们慢慢地在文化的土壤中播下耻辱和公开羞辱的种子，无论是线上还是线下。八卦网站、狗仔队、真人秀节目、政治、新闻媒体，有时甚至是黑客都是羞辱的通道。冷酷、放纵的网络环境助长了网络煽动、侵犯个人隐私、和网络欺凌。这种转变形成了一种尼古拉斯 米尔斯教授所说的羞辱文化。
想想最近六个月发生的事情。Snapchat是一项主要是年轻人使用的服务，它号称所有的信息只有几秒钟的寿命。你可以想象这些信息会包含哪些内容。Snapchat用户使用的保存信息的第三方应用被黑客攻击，近10万名用户的私人谈话、照片、视频被泄露到网上。现在，它们可以永久保留了。
詹妮弗 劳伦斯和其他几位演员的iCloud账户被攻击，他们所有私人的、亲密的、裸体的照片在未经允许的情况下在互联网上铺天盖地地传播。一个八卦网站仅仅因为这一则新闻就获得了超过500万的点击量。索尼影视被黑客攻击的情况又如何呢？最受关注的文件是那些公开羞辱价值最大的私人电子邮件。
但是在这种羞辱文化中，公开羞辱还被贴上了另一种价格标签。这个价格标签衡量的并不是受害者付出的代价，比如泰勒、还有其他很多人，特别是妇女，少数群体和同性恋、双性恋、变性群体(LGBTQ)成员所付出的代价，而是衡量损害他们利益的牟利者的收益。侵入他人领域成了一种原材料，被人以最快的速度无情地挖掘，打包并出售。
一个市场横空出世，公开羞辱是商品，耻辱变成了一种产业。靠什么赚钱呢？点击。耻辱越多，点击越多。点击越多，广告收入就越多。我们身处一个恶性循环。我们对这类八卦点击得越多，我们就会对故事背后的当事人越麻木。我们越麻木，就越会去点击。 与此同时，有些人把自己的利益建立在他人的痛苦之上，每一次点击，我们都是在做出选择。我们文化中充斥的公开耻辱越多，它就越容易被接受，我们就会看到越多的网络欺凌、网络煽动、某些形式的黑客入侵，和线上骚扰。为什么呢？因为它们的核心都是羞辱。这种行为成为了我们所创造的一种文化病症。想想吧。 向网络欺凌说不
改变行为从改变信念开始。不管是现在还是过去，无论是种族歧视、同性恋歧视和其它很多的歧视，都是这样来消除的。随着对同性恋结婚观念的改变，更多人被赋予了平等的自由。随着对可持续性的提倡，越来越多的人开始循环利用。
对于羞辱的文化也应该如此。我们需要文化革命。公开羞辱这种血腥的运动应该终止，是时候对英特网和我们的文化采取干预行动了。
转变可以从简单的事开始，不过这也不容易。我们需要回归人类固有的一种价值，也就是同情心和同理心。互联网正经历着同情心匮乏和同理心危机。 引用研究者布林 布朗的话来说就是，“羞辱在同理心之下无法存活”。羞辱在同理心之下无法存活。我的人生中有过一些非常黑暗的日子，是来自家人、朋友、专业人士、甚至是一些陌生人的同情心和同理心拯救了我。 哪怕只有一个人的同情也会产生改变。社会心理学家谢尔盖 莫斯科维奇提出了小众影响理论。他说，哪怕是小众人群，只要能坚持下去，也能做出改变。在网络世界中，我们可以成为行动派，培养小众影响力。成为行动派意味着不再袖手旁观，而是发表积极评论或是举报欺凌现象。
相信我，表达同情的评论能够削弱负面影响。我们还可以通过支持处理这类问题的组织机构来对抗这种羞辱文化。例如，美国有泰勒 克莱门蒂基金，英国有反欺凌项目，澳大利亚有Rockit项目。
关于言论自由的权力我们讨论了很多，但我们还应该更多地谈谈享受言论自由时所承担的责任。我们都希望自己的声音被听到，但是我们要区分有意图的发声和寻求关注的发声。因特网是表达自我的超级高速公路，但是，站在他人角度考虑问题对我们都是有利的，而且能够帮助创建更安全，更美好的世界。
我们需要怀着同情心在网络上交流，怀着同情心阅读新闻，怀着同情心点击鼠标。试着想象活在别人的新闻头条里。
最后我想以个人说明做总结。过去九个月里，我被人问得最多的问题是“为什么”。为什么是现在？为什么要逆流而上？你们应该可以听出这些问题的言外之意。答案与政治无关。
我的答案是，因为是时候了，是时候不再为过去而过得如履薄冰，是时候结束背负骂名的生活，是时候夺回我的话语权了。
这不仅仅是为了拯救我自己。任何遭受耻辱和公开羞辱的人，都需要明白一点：你能挺过来。我知道这很难，肯定会伴随痛苦，肯定不会又快又轻松，但你可以通过你的坚持，书写一个不同的故事结局。
同情自己。我们都值得同情，无论线上还是线下，我们都应该生活在一个更富有同情心的世界。
谢谢聆听！
（本文根据www.ted.com发布的内容翻译，翻译：张茹）
(原标题：莱温斯基：是时候结束背负着骂名的生活了)
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