LOS ANGELES — “Ghostbusters” star, Leslie Jones, fought back against Twitter users sending her racist and hateful comments on Monday by not allowing them to hide. Instead, she filled her own timeline with screenshots of their spiteful remarks, and let shame rain down upon them.
Jones tweeted, “You know I’m gonna stop blocking so y’all can go through my feed yourself and see the bs. You won’t believe the evil. It’s f****** scary.”
After putting one troll on blast that compared her to an ape, Jones wrote, “I just don’t understand.”
The response from the decent people of Twitter was swift, as users flooded Jones with well wishes and compliments, using #LoveForLeslieJ.
“Ghostbusters” director, Paul Feig, tweeted “attacks against her are attacks against us all.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also entered the conversation, asking Jones to direct message him. “@Lesdoggg Hi Leslie, following, please DM me when you have a moment,” Dorsey tweeted.\
On Tuesday morning, a spokesperson for Twitter issued the following statement to Zap2It, regarding the remarks directed towards Jones:
“This type of abusive behavior is not permitted on Twitter, and we’ve taken action on many of the accounts reported to us by both Leslie and others. We rely on people to report this type of behavior to us but we are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to prevent this kind of abuse. We realize we still have a lot of work in front of us before Twitter is where it should be on how we handle these issues.”
But by Monday night, all of the back and forth appeared to take a toll on Jones who tweeted that she was quitting Twitter. “I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the s*** got today…wrong”
Jones is far from the first celebrity to put a spotlight on social media bullying. In fact, the list of celebrities who have stated they have taken a break from social media because of online harassment, is lengthy.
The difference, of course, is that many celebrities are often pushed off of Twitter due to backlash from controversial moments, or comments. Jones’ offense was simply being a black woman in a hit film that earned $46 million at the box office during its opening weekend.
