The Internet According to Monica Lewinsky

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Sixteen years after first facing the nation as that woman, and 10 years after her last major interview, Monica Lewinsky is out with a tell-all in the May issue of Vanity Fair in which she writes about her affair with President Bill Clinton and the ensuing fallout. In the feature, which you can read in Vanity Fair's app for $5 (or wait until it hits newsstands May 13), Lewinsky talks of the stigma that's followed her ever since, and how it has so negatively affected her love life, her career and her self-esteem. But most interesting to us at Mashable, of course, is Lewinsky's perspective on the Internet and, as she calls it, the "culture of humiliation" that has sprung up along with the rise of social media. The meme that never was Lewinsky opens her piece with an anecdote from 2001. She was on stage at Cooper Union as part of filming for an HBO documentary when an audience member asked, "How does it feel to be America's premier queen?" Lewinsky says she was "thunderstruck." But luckily, she says, it was still 2001 — before the rise of Internet memes. Had that awkward moment at Cooper Union aired only a few years later, with the advent of social media, the humiliation would have been even more devastating. That clip would have gone viral on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TMZ, Gawker. It would have become a meme of its own on Tumblr. The viralness itself would have merited mention on the Daily Beast and Huffington Post. That question, if you're looking to watch the video, comes in part nine of the HBO documentary as it was posted on YouTube, at 8:14 in this clip: The unforgiving gaze of the Internet Lewinsky writes that she's not alone when it comes to public humiliation online. "No one, it seems, can escape the unforgiving gaze of the Internet, where gossip, half-truths, and lies take root and fester," she writes. Just ask James Franco, Paula Dean, Anthony Weiner, Amanda Bynes, Shia LaBeouf, Rebecca Black, Avril Lavigne, Rihanna, Courtney Love, Rob Ford and any other celebrity who's had a run through the e-mud (whether deservedly so — or not). There are also the tragic victims of cyber-bullying, like Hannah Smith, Megan Meier and Tyler Clementi — whose suicide Lewinsky says caused her particular grief. "We have created," Lewinsky says, borrowing the words of historian Nicolaus Mills, "a 'culture of humiliation' that not only encourages and revels in Schadenfreude but also rewards those who humiliate others, from the ranks of the paparazzi to the gossip bloggers, the late-night comedians, and the Web 'entrepreneurs' who profit from clandestine videos." 'This new way of being' "Yes, we’re all connected now," Lewinsky writes, noting how we can live-tweet a revolution or "chronicle achievements large and small." "But we’re also caught in a feedback loop of defame and shame," she says, "in which we have become both perps and victims" — constantly circling ourselves in an endless act of self-flagellation. We may not have become a crueler society—although it sure feels as if we have—but the Internet has seismically shifted the tone of our interactions. The ease, the speed, and the distance that our electronic devices afford us can also make us colder, more glib, and less concerned about the consequences of our pranks and prejudice. Having lived humiliation in the most intimate possible way, I marvel at how willingly we have all signed on to this new way of being. The shame game in the Internet age Claiming (rightfully) to be the "the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet," thanks to Matt Drudge's legendary initial report, Lewinsky says she's found compassion for the various people who have found themselves "shamed on the Web" — including those who don't make worldwide headlines but suffer at the hands of their peers. Lewinsky raises a string of questions that are now a part of our national discourse but have been a part of her identity since 1998: How do we reconcile the right to privacy with the need to expose sexual indiscretion? How do we guard against an overzealous government demanding our private data and information? And, most important to me personally, how do we cope with the shame game as it’s played in the Internet Age? Her current goal, she says, is "to get involved with efforts on behalf of victims of online humiliation and harassment and to start speaking on this topic in public forums." From