Sunday, September 27, 2020

Quotes for the Day


Monica Lewinsky
TED Talk: "The Price of Shame" (2015)


In her inspirational and thought provoking address, Ms Lewinksy supported victims of online bullying and highlighted the consequences of such actions and behaviour. 

In that talk she made the point: 

“We talk a lot about our right to freedom of speech, but we need to talk more about our responsibility to freedom of speech.” 

Click on the above link to hear Ms Lewinsky's TED Talk.

Nadia Petschek Rawls, TED’s social media editor, has written of the deluge of abuse and nasty comments that followed the posting of her talk. Her comments can be read at:

Some of her comments:

As I read hundreds of hideous comments, I suddenly realized I was being subjected to a tiny fraction of what Monica has experienced every day since she was 24 years old, essentially every day of her adult life. I can only begin to imagine how profoundly these hateful comments must have shaped her self-worth. We all find our self-esteem shaken when we feel insulted or disrespected. But to have the entire world insult you to your face — for 17 years straight? That’s abuse on another level.

But then an interesting thing happened. After hours spent boosting the positive comments and purging most of the brutish ones, the tide started to turn. People started to write things like, “Brave woman. My first reaction was negative before I even clicked the link — then I realized that was the whole point and why she was the perfect person to give this talk.”

I think of that moment of sea change like a sort of herd immunity. The positive voices, when there are enough of them, keep abusive ones from spreading, just as a mostly vaccinated population protects those few people who are not. Together, we have the power to protect the most vulnerable among us.

 

TED Conferences LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American media organization that posts talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading".

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