Clare Stephens Q&A - The Worst Thing I've Ever Done

Allen & Unwin
Oct 3
6 min read

We chat with Clare Stephens author of The Worst Thing I've Ever Done.

The Worst Thing I've Ever Done by Clare Stephens

A&U: The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done feels frightening current! What sparked the idea for this story?

CS: It does! I wondered throughout the writing process whether the phenomenon I was describing might pass by the time the book was published, but it seems like the temperature of online outrage is continuing to increase. The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done is about an internet pile-on and public shaming, and there were many, many moments that sparked the idea. As editor-in-chief of a women's media company, I was very attuned to any controversy in the news, and I noticed how women in particular were torn apart for relatively minor transgressions. Then I had very small instances of my own where I made a mistake or shared a clumsy opinion, and I couldn't believe how scary, isolating and intense the backlash felt. I wanted to evoke that sensation in a reader. That's where the idea for the story began!

A&U: Was there a real-world event or online controversy that particularly influenced your thinking while writing?

CS: There were too many to count (and several that happened throughout the writing process)! I actually spoke to a number of high profile Australian media personalities while I was researching the book, and some of those conversations are now on the record in my podcast series The Pile-On, where I'm interviewing people who have been at the centre of internet outrage. People like Cheek Media's Hannah Ferguson, journalist Marlee Silva, and Married at First Sight star Domenica Calarco.

But I was also influenced by watching the character assassination of Lena Dunham several years ago. As a woman in my 20s who was so excited to see a different kind of woman on-screen, I remember watching her be treated with contempt from every possible corner. I didn't understand how a person could possibly keep creating, keep maintaining a public life, when they were confronted with those kinds of threats to their reputation. And the accusations became absurd - she once re-homed a dog and was called an animal abuser. That got me thinking about whether it's actually 'liveable' to be a woman in the public eye - particularly one who's impulsive and imperfect and still learning.

A&U: Ruby’s public shaming cracks open a private shame she’s carried for years. What drew you to explore how public and private shame collide?

CS: During my time as editor-in-chief, I would sometimes watch as a junior writer or another colleague was called out online in quite a vicious way. I'd always look at those adding to the pile-on and think: you know nothing about the person you're attacking - whether they're having an awful time at home, whether they're grieving, whether there's a whole lot of behind-the-scenes context that would explain something you've automatically deemed as malicious. I wanted to play with the idea that online we're all two-dimensional avatars, and so we don't think we can truly hurt each other. We don't see each other as real. But when you're being publicly shamed, the darkest thought you have is: what if I deserve it? What if they're right? What if I am, actually, a bad person? And we've all done things we're not proud of. We're all morally imperfect. So I wanted to explore that tension.

A&U: Shame is such a primal, universal emotion. Do you think fiction allows us to confront it in a way that’s safer or more real than in our own lives?

CS: I think it does, because in a strange way, in real life I believe we diminish other people's shame based on the noise around them. We decide that they are a fundamentally different kind of person because of what they've said, or what's been written about them, and therefore the shame they feel is warranted and somehow useful. I wanted to build this fictional character and fictional world so that readers could live inside the perspective of the person at the centre of the shaming, and see how familiar and cruel it feels.

A&U: Do you think women experience public shaming differently from men?

CS: Yes. On the one hand, I think we hold women to a different moral standard than we do men. We've been socialised to view women as inherently altruistic and entirely selfless. So when a woman contravenes this mould (or we perceive her to), we punish her for it. We also feel like women owe us something. They owe us a reflection of ourselves, of our values, of what we believe a woman should be.

Then, when a pile-on does happen, women suffer more intensely because of the gendered nature of the pile-on itself. We know that women are more likely to disappear completely from public life because of these experiences, or simply because of their fear of these experiences. That's a big part of why I wrote the book, because the fact that we hound women out of public life means our media landscape is going to continue to be dominated by men. Which is a huge loss for culture, broadly.

A&U: Ruby’s experience shows how quickly narratives spiral online. What do you think this says about how we consume and weaponise stories today?

CS: Ruby's experience is a testament to how quickly we conflate an individual person with an ideology. I think when our attention spans are so broken, and we have no other forum for prosecuting moral questions (like via organised religion, or a tight knit community), we prosecute the idea of 'goodness' via people. News stories, then, become like fables. We want villains and heroes, and clear moral lessons. In Ruby's case, one she's cast as a villain, it seems impossible to emerge from that label.

A&U: Social media promises connection but often delivers cruelty and isolation. Do you think we’ve normalised treating strangers online in ways we never would face-to-face?

CS: I think the more time we spend online, the more we get used to dehumanisation and treating people as the avatars they exist as in our phones.

We're also living at a bizarre time in human history where we're probably having fewer high-quality interactions with other people in real life than ever before, while also being exposed to an unprecedented spectrum of the population online. Because we're not meeting people or becoming close with people who are different from us, we react aggressively when we come across them on the internet. We assume they're monsters, rather than considering that perhaps they just have a unique set of experiences that has led them to believe what they believe. So treating strangers online in an aggressive way has become completely normal, AND it's rewarded by social media algorithms.

A&U: Did writing Ruby’s story change the way you see or engage with social media yourself?

CS: Writing Ruby's story and her world has given me significantly more empathy for people on either end of an online pile-on. I can relate to how it feels to be misunderstood, to want to shout from the rooftops to defend yourself, to being furious are those who have misrepresented you. But I also understand those who drive pile-on culture. They're at the mercy of algorithms that have taught them there's a benefit to outrage, and their passion and commitment to particular social justice issues is entirely genuine.

I would never, ever contribute to a pile-on, and I'm now far more likely to sit back and see the humanity and the vulnerability on both sides.

A&U: What conversations do you hope the book sparks among readers?

CS: I've already had readers reach out and share that they've been the drivers of a pile-on, and they regret it, which is fascinating!! I think for them, the book humanised the type of person they were attacking.

I hope the book makes people question their instinctive animosity towards women, and that it paints a picture of the collateral damage of public shaming. Most of all, I hope it helps people see real-time pile-ons with empathy, and therefore reconsider the value of contributing to them.