The "amazing" Internet

I wish I could say that I had no idea what Monica Lewinsky was talking about when she referred to humiliation to death, but unfortunately it is something not uncommon that is seen in the world today. Monica Lewinsky spoke about her own experience with public humiliation and embarrassment regarding her affair with President Clinton in 1998. Clinton is at fault as much as Lewinsky was, but yet she got a reputation as being a slut, tramp, whore, bimbo, and so many other cruel names. Bill Clinton did not have the same public experience as she did. In a Vanity Fair article, Monica Lewinsky further speaks about her experience. She states that while this was going on, Bill Clinton had his whole administration protecting him while the 24 year old intern had cruel emails sent to her, her family being threatened to testify against their own daughter, and other family member's lives and jobs on the line. The start of the article was a positive and happy moment in Lewinsky's life that was greeted by darkness known as Ken Starr. Ken Starr was the independent prosecutor who put Lewinsky in a hotel room and forced her to cooperate or face 27 years in prison. She was 24, he turned her life into a living hell. However, at the point where she saw him, Lewinsky had survived through her decade of silence and hell and was able to not only voice her opinion to him, but go as far as to introducing him to her family as the man who ended her twenties.

The point of Monica Lewinsky's Ted Talk was to speak out after her decade of silence, but was also to inform people on the danger of public harassment and embarrassment. She used an example of an 18 year old boy named Tyler who jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death because his roommate secretly videotaped him and his partner. As stated above, Tyler's story is one out of the many that the country has faced. In the last few years, the suicide rate for teenagers has sky rocketed and is the highest it's ever been. This is because of one thing, social media/the internet. Tyler's story reminded me of another that Governor's students heard a few months ago at convocation. A father came and spoke about his son's suicide. I'm not sure how old he was but he was a teenager, maybe on the younger side. Monica Lewinsky talked about how us as a country needs to do something to stop this. We have created a culture of humiliation, people are making money off other people's suffering and it will continue to take more and more lives.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/monica-lewinsky-in-the-age-of-metoo