原文:
站在你們面前的這個(gè)女性曾在公眾面前沉默了十年。顯然,現(xiàn)在不一樣了,不過這只是最近的事。幾個(gè)月前在福布斯”30位30歲以下創(chuàng)業(yè)者”峰會(huì)上,我首次公開發(fā)表演講,峰會(huì)上有1500位杰出人士,全部不到30歲。這就意味著在1998年,其中最年長(zhǎng)的人也只有14歲,最年輕的則只有4歲。我同他們開玩笑,有些人似乎只是從說唱音樂中聽過我的名字。沒錯(cuò),說唱音樂唱過我,幾乎有40首這樣的說唱音樂。
在我演講當(dāng)晚 意外的事情發(fā)生了,作為一個(gè)41歲的女性,竟然有一個(gè)27歲的小伙子勾搭我。我知道,難以相信吧?他很有魅力,說了不少奉承的話,結(jié)果我拒絕了。知道他的搭訕不成功在哪嗎?他說他能讓我感到又回到了22歲……那天晚上我意識(shí)到,40歲時(shí)不想回到22歲的人或許就只有我了。22歲時(shí),我愛上了我的老板,在24歲那年,我明白了其毀滅性的后果。
能否請(qǐng)大家舉手告訴我,如果你覺得自己22歲時(shí)沒有犯過錯(cuò),沒有做過讓自己后悔的事,請(qǐng)舉手?同我想的一樣,和我一樣,22歲那年,你們中的一些人大概也犯過錯(cuò),愛上過錯(cuò)誤的人,或許也正是你的老板。不過和我不同,你的老板八成不是美國總統(tǒng)。當(dāng)然,生活充滿了意外。每一天我都被提醒這個(gè)錯(cuò)誤,我每天都在深深后悔。
1998年 在卷入一段不可能的愛情之后,我被卷入政治、法律和媒體的漩渦中心,一場(chǎng)前所未見的漩渦。記得吧,就在幾年前,新聞只有三個(gè)來源:讀報(bào)刊雜志、聽收音機(jī)和看電視,就這些了。但我的命并沒這么好,這起丑聞通過數(shù)字革命被公之于眾。數(shù)字革命意味著我們能獲取所有想要的信息,不管何時(shí)何地。丑聞在1998年1月被首次揭露就是通過互聯(lián)網(wǎng)。這是傳統(tǒng)媒體第一次在重大事件報(bào)道上被因特網(wǎng)搶先,一個(gè)點(diǎn)擊的聲音響徹了全世界。
對(duì)我個(gè)人而言,它讓我一夜間從一個(gè)完完全全的無名人士變成一個(gè)被全世界公開羞辱的對(duì)象。我成了零號(hào)病人,第一個(gè)經(jīng)歷如何在全球范圍內(nèi)瞬間失去個(gè)人聲譽(yù)。
這種由科技促進(jìn)的草率道德審判導(dǎo)致我在網(wǎng)絡(luò)世界里被投石暴民圍攻。誠然,這是在社交媒體出現(xiàn)之前,不過人們還是可以在線評(píng)論,郵件轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)故事,當(dāng)然,也能轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)殘忍的笑話。新聞媒體將我的照片貼得到處都是,借此銷售報(bào)紙,為網(wǎng)站吸引廣告商,為電視吸引眼球。
記得我那張照片嗎?戴著貝雷帽的那張?我承認(rèn),我犯了錯(cuò)誤,特別是不該戴那頂貝雷帽。在關(guān)注故事之外,人們對(duì)我個(gè)人的關(guān)注和道德審判也是前所未有的,我被打上各種標(biāo)簽 蕩婦、妓女、母狗、婊子、賤人,當(dāng)然還有 “那個(gè)女人”。很多人都看到了我,但很少有人了解我。我明白,人們很容易忘記一個(gè)女人是多維度的,其實(shí)她也有靈魂,也曾是完好無缺的。17年前,這些發(fā)生在我身上的事還沒有專門的名詞來稱呼。現(xiàn)在,我們稱之為網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌和線上騷擾。
今天,我想和大家分享一些個(gè)人經(jīng)歷,我要講講這些經(jīng)歷如何塑造了我的文化觀察。我希望我過去的經(jīng)歷,能夠引起變革,讓其他人少遭遇欺凌。1998年,我失去了聲譽(yù)和尊嚴(yán),我?guī)缀跏チ艘磺?包括生命。讓我給大家描繪一下,這是1998年9月,我坐在一間沒有窗戶的辦公室,在獨(dú)立檢察官辦公室,嗡嗡作響的熒光燈下,我聽著自己的聲音,這是一年前電話竊聽錄取的聲音,這位錄音者,我原來還當(dāng)作朋友。我坐在那里是因?yàn)榉梢?我要親自鑒定全部二十小時(shí)的對(duì)話錄音。過去的八個(gè)月,這些錄音帶中的神秘內(nèi)容,就像達(dá)摩克利斯之劍一樣懸在我的頭頂。想想,誰能記得自己一年前說了什么。我很害怕,很屈辱地聽著,聽我自己平日閑暇時(shí)的扯東拉西,聽我自己坦白對(duì)總統(tǒng)的愛意。當(dāng)然,還有我的心碎。聽到那個(gè)有時(shí)狡猾、有時(shí)暴躁、有時(shí)愚蠢的我——無情、記仇、粗魯。我聽著,深深地感到羞愧,這是最糟糕的我,糟糕到我自己都不認(rèn)識(shí)。
幾天后 斯塔爾報(bào)告被提交給國會(huì),所有錄音和原文稿,所有被竊取的言語,都成了其中一部分。人們能夠讀到原文稿就已經(jīng)很讓人害怕了,但這還沒完,數(shù)周后,錄音帶又被公開到電視上,還有很大一部分散播到了網(wǎng)上。這種公開羞辱很折磨人,生命幾乎變得不可承受。這種情況在1998年的時(shí)候發(fā)生得并不常見,”這種情況”指的是竊取人們的私下言語、行為、對(duì)話或照片將之公開于眾--沒有征得同意的公開、沒有來龍去脈的公開、沒有絲毫同情的公開。
快進(jìn)12年到2010年,社交媒體出現(xiàn)了,像我這樣的例子開始越來越多,甚至無論當(dāng)事人有沒有犯錯(cuò)。而且公眾人物和普通人都深受其害,有些事件的結(jié)果非常悲慘。
2010年9月 我和我媽打了一通電話,我們談到了一則新聞,關(guān)于羅格斯大學(xué)的一個(gè)大學(xué)新生。他叫泰勒·克萊門蒂——親切、靈敏、富有創(chuàng)造性的泰勒被室友偷拍到和另一個(gè)男的有親密行為,視頻被傳播到網(wǎng)上,嘲笑和網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌之火被點(diǎn)燃。幾天后,泰勒從喬治·華盛頓大橋縱身躍下……生命就這樣逝去……他只有18歲。
我媽講到泰勒和他家人時(shí)非常激動(dòng),她發(fā)自內(nèi)心的痛苦。我在當(dāng)時(shí)還有點(diǎn)無法理解,不過我逐漸意識(shí)到,她在重新經(jīng)歷1998年,重新經(jīng)歷她每晚都坐在我的床頭的時(shí)候,重新經(jīng)歷她讓我洗澡時(shí)不要關(guān)門的時(shí)候,重新經(jīng)歷她和爸爸擔(dān)心我會(huì)因?yàn)樾呷瓒廊サ臅r(shí)候。一點(diǎn)也不夸張。
現(xiàn)如今,很多父母都沒來得及介入挽救自己至愛的子女,很多父母在知道子女的痛苦和羞辱時(shí)都為時(shí)已晚。泰勒悲劇而無謂的死亡,對(duì)我而言是一個(gè)轉(zhuǎn)折點(diǎn)。它讓我重新審視了我的親身經(jīng)歷,讓我開始思考周遭充滿羞辱和欺凌的世界,讓我看到了不同的東西。
在1998年 沒人知道因特網(wǎng)這種新生技術(shù)會(huì)將人類引往何方。自誕生以來,因特網(wǎng)讓人類以難以設(shè)想的方式聯(lián)系了起來,讓人們找到失散的兄弟姐妹、挽救生命,發(fā)起革命。不過同時(shí),我所經(jīng)歷的陰暗面、網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌和肆意辱罵也如雨后春筍增生。每天在網(wǎng)上,總有人,特別是依然稚嫩不知如何處理這些的年輕人總會(huì)被如此欺凌和羞辱,以至于感覺無法活到第二天,有些人也確實(shí)悲劇地因此而死。這一點(diǎn)也不虛擬。
ChildLine是致力于幫助年輕人處理各種問題的英國公益組織。去年,該組織發(fā)布了一則驚人的統(tǒng)計(jì)結(jié)果,2012到2013年,與網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌相關(guān)的電話和電子郵件增加了87%。一篇來自荷蘭的綜合分析首次顯示出,網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌比網(wǎng)下欺凌更容易導(dǎo)致自殺意念。去年還有一項(xiàng)研究讓我很震驚,或許我本不該驚訝,該研究顯示羞辱是比高興、甚至憤怒都更為強(qiáng)烈的情感。對(duì)他人殘忍已經(jīng)不是新鮮事了,但網(wǎng)上,由技術(shù)促進(jìn)的羞辱卻會(huì)被放大,不受遏制而且永遠(yuǎn)可以被看到。傳統(tǒng)的羞辱只會(huì)局限于家庭、村莊、學(xué)�；蚴巧鐓^(qū),而現(xiàn)在則會(huì)擴(kuò)展到網(wǎng)絡(luò)社區(qū)。成百萬上千萬的人能匿名地用言語攻擊你,這會(huì)讓人非常痛苦,而且能夠公開看到這些攻擊的人是沒有限定范圍的。被公開羞辱對(duì)個(gè)人損害很大,因特網(wǎng)的傳播大幅提升了這個(gè)損害。
近二十年來,我們逐漸在文化的土壤中,播下了羞辱和公開侮辱的種子。無論是網(wǎng)上還是網(wǎng)下,八卦網(wǎng)站、狗仔隊(duì)、真人節(jié)目、政治、新聞報(bào)道甚至黑客,這些都是羞辱的渠道。麻木不仁、無孔不入的網(wǎng)絡(luò)環(huán)境讓網(wǎng)絡(luò)煽動(dòng)、隱私侵犯、網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌越來越猖獗。這種轉(zhuǎn)變創(chuàng)造出了尼古拉斯·米爾斯教授所說的“羞辱文化”。
來看一些顯著例子 這些還只是最近六個(gè)月發(fā)生的。“Snapchat”該服務(wù)主要是年輕人在用,宣稱其內(nèi)容閱后即焚,信息只會(huì)存在幾秒,可以想象這會(huì)涉及到哪類內(nèi)容。Snapchat用戶所使用的一種長(zhǎng)久保留信息的第三方應(yīng)用程序被入侵了,十萬人的個(gè)人對(duì)話、照片、視頻被泄露到網(wǎng)上,這些內(nèi)容的壽命就這樣變成了永遠(yuǎn)。詹妮弗·勞倫斯和其他幾位演員的iCloud帳戶被入侵,私人私密裸照被傳播到互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上,未經(jīng)任何允許。一個(gè)八卦網(wǎng)站僅僅因?yàn)檫@一個(gè)內(nèi)容,就獲得了五百萬以上的點(diǎn)擊量。再想想索尼影業(yè)黑客襲擊,最受關(guān)注的文檔,竟然是公開羞辱價(jià)值最大的一些私人郵件。在這種羞辱文化中,公開羞辱還被貼上了另一種價(jià)格標(biāo)簽,這里衡量的并不是受害者遭受了多少損失,諸如泰勒,還有很多人的遭遇,尤其是女性、少數(shù)群體以及多元性別群體中的成員。這里的價(jià)格標(biāo)簽衡量的是借此牟利者的利潤(rùn),侵入他人私人領(lǐng)域成了一種原料受到這些人的無情挖掘、包裝和銷售。一個(gè)市場(chǎng)在誕生,公開羞辱變成了其中的商品。
恥辱則變成了一種產(chǎn)業(yè)。如何賺錢呢?點(diǎn)擊。羞辱越多,點(diǎn)擊也就越多,點(diǎn)擊越多,廣告費(fèi)也越多。這是一個(gè)危險(xiǎn)的循環(huán)。我們對(duì)這些八卦點(diǎn)擊得越多,我們就會(huì)對(duì)故事背后的人越麻木,我們?cè)绞锹槟?就越會(huì)去點(diǎn)擊。自始至終,都是有些人在利用他人的痛苦在牟利,每一次點(diǎn)擊,我們都是在作出選擇。文化中充斥的公開羞辱越多,越被接受,我們就會(huì)越多地看到網(wǎng)絡(luò)欺凌、網(wǎng)絡(luò)煽動(dòng)、黑客入侵,還有線上騷擾。為什么?因?yàn)樗鼈兊暮诵亩际切呷?這種行為成為了我們所創(chuàng)造的一種文化癥狀。
改變行為從改變信念開始,無論是種族歧視還是同性戀歧視,現(xiàn)在和過去的很多歧視都是這樣來消除。隨著對(duì)同性婚姻觀念的改變,更多人被賦予了平等的自由。隨著對(duì)可持續(xù)性的倡導(dǎo),越來越多的人開始回收利用。對(duì)于羞辱的文化也應(yīng)如此,我們需要文化革命,公開羞辱這種流血的娛樂應(yīng)當(dāng)終止。無論是因特網(wǎng)上、還是文化中,現(xiàn)在都該干預(yù)了。
轉(zhuǎn)變可以從簡(jiǎn)單的事開始,不過它本身并不簡(jiǎn)單。我們需要回歸人類固有的一種價(jià)值,也就是同情心和同理心。網(wǎng)上正在經(jīng)歷同情心缺乏和同理心危機(jī)。引用研究者布琳·布朗的話,”羞辱在同理心下無法存活”。
我生命中經(jīng)歷了一些異常黑暗的日子,是來自家人、朋友、專業(yè)人士甚至一些陌生人的同情心和同理心拯救了我,哪怕只有一個(gè)人的理解也會(huì)很有用。社會(huì)心理學(xué)家謝爾蓋·莫斯科維奇所提出的小眾影響理論認(rèn)為哪怕是小眾人群,只要能堅(jiān)持下去,變化也能發(fā)生。在網(wǎng)絡(luò)世界中,我們可以通過站起來來培育小眾影響力,站起來是說不再冷漠旁觀而是發(fā)表積極評(píng)論支持受害者或是舉報(bào)欺凌現(xiàn)象。相信我,富有同情心的評(píng)論能夠減少消極效果,我們還可以通過支持處理這類問題的組織機(jī)構(gòu)來對(duì)抗這種羞辱文化。例如:美國有泰勒·克萊門蒂基金會(huì),英國有反欺凌項(xiàng)目,澳大利亞有Rockit項(xiàng)目。
我們經(jīng)常提到表達(dá)自由的權(quán)利,此外我們還應(yīng)該更多地談到我們?cè)诒磉_(dá)自由上的責(zé)任。我們都希望自己的聲音被聽到,不過我們需要區(qū)分懷有意圖的發(fā)聲和請(qǐng)求關(guān)注的發(fā)聲,因特網(wǎng)是表達(dá)自我的超級(jí)高速公路。不過在網(wǎng)上換位思考他人處境對(duì)所有人都是有利的,而且能夠幫助創(chuàng)建更安全更美好的世界。我們需要懷著同情心在網(wǎng)上交流,懷著同情心閱讀新聞,懷著同情心點(diǎn)擊網(wǎng)站。
試想下自己活在別人的新聞?lì)^條里。
最后,我想以個(gè)人說明作結(jié),過去九個(gè)月里我被問得最多的問題是為什么,為什么現(xiàn)在,為什么我要出這個(gè)頭。你們應(yīng)該可以聽出這些問題的言外之意。答案同政治無關(guān)。
我的回答是:因?yàn)槭菚r(shí)候了,是時(shí)候不再為過去而小心翼翼,是時(shí)候不再背負(fù)恥辱地活著,是時(shí)候講述自己的經(jīng)歷。這不僅僅是為了拯救我自己,任何遭受恥辱和公開羞辱的人都需要知道一點(diǎn)——你能撐過來,我知道這很難,肯定會(huì)有痛苦,肯定不會(huì)來得輕松容易。不過你能堅(jiān)持下去 并書寫出不同的故事結(jié)局。同情自己,我們都值得同情,無論線上還是線下,我們都需要生活在一個(gè)更富有同情心的世界。
謝謝聆聽!
英文原文:
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 andonline 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
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.
「標(biāo)簽: ted演講稿」
