Arianna Huffington dropped by the George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight show on CBC Television during her recent visit to Toronto, where she also found time to give the keynote speech at the Digital Media Summit.
In this clip, Huffington, editor-in-chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, speaks to Strombo about the millions of comments left on the company's media sites and how she handles personal attacks.
The full Stroumboulopoulos interview airs Tuesday, March 27 at 11:05 p.m. ET on CBC.
"Look at a child and see how a child handles being upset or angry," Huffington said. "A child will get really upset, and really cry, and then like 5 minutes later, it’s as though nothing’s happened. That’s what I love. I love to live life like that. It’s perfectly okay to be upset and angry and irritated. But how long do you stay on it? That for me is the key."
Stroumboulopoulos asked Huffington if she sneaks online late at night and responds to comments under a pseudonym.
"No. But I look at comments a lot," she said, laughing. "Because you know, commenting is one of the best things at HuffPost. Since our launch we’ve had 140 million comments. People love to comment and our comments are pre-moderated, which means they’re not taken over by trolls and ad hominem attacks, so the debate can stay civil, which is so important."
Before the Strombo taping, Huffington warned the Digital Media Summit in Toronto about the perils of "the fetishization of things going viral.”
“We have to stop treating virality as a good unto itself,” she told a capacity crowd. “We need to stop living in a kind of perpetual now where everything is breaking news.”
Read more about her keynote speech and her own blog on What The Fetishization Of Virality Is Costing Us All.
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