Monica Lewinsky broke her decade-long silence Monday, claiming she was the first victim of cyberbullying.
In announcing her new campaign to end cyberbullying to a crowd at Forbes’ inaugural 30 Under 30 summit in Philadelphia, Lewinsky called herself “Patient Zero,” according to Forbes.
“The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet,” the former mistress of President Bill Clinton said about herself, referring to the online harassment she received in the late 1990s after the news of her affair was released.
Lewinsky teared up when describing her life during the months after the then-unknown gossip website the Drudge Report broke the news of the affair she was having with Clinton, a time plagued with thoughts of suicide, she said.
“I wanted to die,” she revealed, saying she often thought that way when looking online at what people were saying about her.
“There was no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram back then,” she said. “But there were gossip, news and entertainment websites replete with comment sections and emails which could be forwarded. Of course, it was all done on the excruciatingly slow dial up. Yet, around the world this story went. A viral phenomenon that, you could argue, was the first moment of truly ‘social media.’”
Lewinsky said she hopes to soon launch a “cultural revolution” against the forms of online harassment, joining Twitter with a tweet with the hashtag “#HereWeGo.”
