I woke up this morning with anxiety in the pit of my stomach, that old familiar fear of being judged. Last week I’d agreed – rather reluctantly – to an interview with Rachel Martin from NPR about how one recovers from a public shaming, a timely subject coming off Brian Williams‘ lie exposure. The NPR producers had read one on my blog postings and liked my take on it.
While I am a crusader for truth in advertising in college admissions and in all things, I’ve grown wary of both the press and public reaction, having had more than my share of hate mail over these 8 years since leaving MIT in such a public way. But I agreed to the interview because I’m distressed over the suppressive effect social media shaming has on kids, shutting down their desire to be unique and extinguishing creative effort. It’s even done that to me.
Social media creates virtual mob rule and in a free country we have no way to stop it. We have freedom of the press here.
As a result, though, we stand by helplessly while others get shredded by haters and trolls who have their way until they focus on another victim, smelling blood in the water.
Rachel Martin was wonderful and I enjoyed my time with her. It’s a hard subject to discuss and she created a zone of safety that allowed me to relax and speak sincerely. Now, after the interview has aired, I’m getting so many tweets, both supportive and not. It would be fascinating if it wasn’t so personal. I feel grateful to the writers of the supportive ones. The non-supportive tweets make me angry, but to be honest, they just hurt.
It’s a lonely place to be, exposed on the internet forever more, never allowed to fully heal or to forget.
I personally know no one who shares this experience, so I have visions of starting a club of people who have been scandalized on the front page of the NYT, well-known people caught doing something terribly human. The poster children of the-human-as-walking-contradiction.
So now my goal is to do a presentation at a major media conference where I can share with reporters and producers what it’s really like to be on the receiving end of their often insensitive attention. Maybe after his dark night of the soul has passed, I’ll ask Brian Williams to join me in that.