Lewinsky: Internet has ‘an empathy crisis’

PHILADELPHIA — Monica Lewinsky told a packed crowd at Forbes magazine’s “Under 30” summit Monday that people are “ripped apart online” every single day.
 
“We are all vulnerable to humiliation, private and public figures alike,” Lewinsky said in her first public speech in more than a decade.

{mosads}“I’m sure Jennifer Lawrence would agree with that, or any of the 90,000 people whose private Snapchat pictures were released last week” Lewinsky said.

Hacked nude photos of “The Hunger Games” star appeared online earlier this year in what Lawrence has called a “sex crime.”

Describing how she felt after news of her affair with President Clinton first broke on the Internet in 1998, Lewinsky, now 41, said, “I was shattered. … I just wanted to die.”

The former White House intern said at the time it felt as if “the whole world is laughing at you.”
 
“Thankfully, people aren’t punched every day on the street. But it happens all the time on the Internet,” she added.
 
Lewinsky, at times choking up during her speech, said, “The consequences can be devastating and anyone can be next.”

She noted the story of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who killed himself in 2010 after intimate photos of him were posted online. Lewinsky called the tragedy “one of the principal reasons I’m standing here today,” saying she’s been in touch with Clementi’s family.
 
“No one is immune” from cyber-bullying, the Los Angeles native said. Addressing online reputations, she told the audience, “Lose it, as you so easily can, and you lose an integral part of yourself. That’s what happened to me in 1998, when public Monica, ‘that Monica,’ ‘that woman,’ was born — the creature from the media lagoon.”
 
Lewinsky — who joined Twitter on Monday shortly before her public talk — said she now wants to bring “purpose” to her past by sharing her story. She described a “compassion deficit, an empathy crisis” on the Internet.
 
Calling for a “radical change in attitudes on the Internet, mobile platforms, and the society of which they are a part,” Lewinsky said. “What we really need is a cultural revolution.”