But what started out as a “cute” reality show, co-starring Joseph and Nev Schulman as they attempted to unite cyber lovers who had never met, soon turned into a “dark” project.The 39-year-old US director, who appeared on the series for nearly eight years, tells news.com.au just how drastically things went in a different direction as filming went on.“We were very much immersed in the social media environment, and at first Catfish was this really cute, fun phenomenon. Then it got darker,” he says.“These stories started to come out about people conning people, and murdering people, and then around 2015, there was just a new flavour in the mix. A new darkness. An anger. “It just seemed like we started to enjoy tearing people apart, in the same way we’d enjoy tearing a movie apart.“And I saw that with people when the show would air. We did all this work to help people on Catfish feel OK, telling their story and not being ashamed of themselves, only to have the episode air and for that night the internet would roast them and we’d have to tell them not to watch it.“It’s really troubling and messed up.”His realisation that things were no longer “cute” spawned Joseph’s latest project, HBO documentary 15 Minutes of Shame, which hits streaming on Binge in Australia today.Joseph, who directed the doco, teamed up with famed former White House intern Monica Lewinsky to produce the 90-minute in-depth look at cancel culture, and why there seems to be an increasing collective desire to tear people down.“The answer doesn’t fit into a headline. It doesn’t fit into a tweet. It’s a combination of human nature. We’ve always done this, we’ve evolved to do it. We enjoy doing it. We enjoy seeing justice being done,” Joseph says.“But we also enjoy watching people be humiliated when we think they deserve it.”As for what Joseph thinks the solution could be, he says Australia is leading the charge with developing laws around cyber bullying.“Australia is ahead of the pack in terms of setting up an office to protect citizens who are becoming a target of cyber bullying and revenge porn,” he says. “That is a step in right direction. “In the US and other countries, there are laws protecting these big tech platforms from the harm users are doing to each other. “Protecting the law, as opposed to protecting the tech company, would also be a big step in helping this not happen to people.”Joseph also gave an insight into just how much Lewinsky has flourished as an advocate for cyber bullying. Lewinsky, now 48, is a key voice on the topic having fallen victim to public shaming after her infamous affair with then US president, Bill Clinton, in 1998, when she was just 22.Stream 15 Minutes of Shame on BINGE. New customers get a 14-day free trial and start streaming instantly. Sign up at binge.com.au“She’s really lived through this. I don’t want to get into specifics because we spoke in confidence, but there’s a really long tale to this stuff,” Joseph says.“People say time heals all wounds, but being publicly shamed actually gets worse with time. I think for Monica, amazingly, it’s a miracle the world has come around to see that what happened to her is actually now happening a lot. “It wasn’t simply just a mistake she made, but other systems at play. There was politics and clickbait at play. There was a misogynistic society blaming her instead of the person that had power. “But what we’ve seen making the doc is that it gets worse with time. The story might go away, the crowd moves on, but it gets worse for the person because now they’re left with the world having written their narrative for them, and they need to claw it back. “I really admire Monica because she’s been through a lot and she’s not bitter. She’s not mad. She’s quite funny. I really admire her fortitude in facing it and having such grace about it.”The Lewinsky-Clinton scandal has also recently been dramatised for the new series, Impeachment: American Crime Story.15 Minutes of Shame is now streaming on BINGE
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