Monica Lewinsky debuts on Twitter

Washington, Oct 21 (IANS/EFE) Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who had an affair with then president Bill Clinton in 1998, has debuted on the Twitter social network just before speaking at Forbes magazine's Under-30 Summit about harassment and bullying on the Internet.

"Social activist. Public speaker. Contributor to Vanity Fair. Knitter of things without sleeves," says the profile of the one-time White House intern, who said she felt "excited (and nervous)" before the conference Monday.

"Exciting", "brave" and "sincere" were some of the adjectives used by the more than 12,100 people who now follow Lewinsky on Twitter.

Her first post, "#HereWeGo", received some l,300 tweets before she gave her talk at the conference, with 576 people marking it as a favourite.

The Forbes seminar seeks to bring together in Philadelphia more than 1,000 young entrepreneurs from around the world to exchange ideas.

"What does it really feel like to watch yourself -- or your name and likeness -- be ripped apart online?" Lewinsky asked at the summit, where she spoke about sexism and cyberbullying, and confessed that the idea of suicide crossed her mind when her affair with then President Bill Clinton went viral.

Lewinsky, after several years of depression, decided to try and make something out of her unwanted publicity and launched a line of purses under her name and appeared on several TV shows.

But then in 2005 she left the US to study in England at the prestigious London School of Economics, where she graduated in Social Psychology, and since then has tried to rebuild her life as far from the media as possible.

--IANS/EFE

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