Leslie Jones exposes rampant social media racism, quits Twitter
Leslie Jones should have been celebrating the successful opening weekend of her new movie, “Ghostbusters,” but instead she was contending with a whole different kind of specter.
On Monday, Jones decided she was tired of simply blocking the constant flood of racist and hateful messages she received on Twitter and shared some of them with her followers, asking quite pointedly why the social media app wasn’t doing more to stop them.
Jones then proceeded to tweet screenshots of some of the more vile and egregious racist and sexist messages she’d been receiving. But while the attention brought out droves of supporters -- including her “Ghostbusters” director, Paul Feig -- the attention seemed to only embolden her attackers further, and the noxious tone escalated.
At one point, a group of trolls began tweeting Jones with doctored images of tweets made to look like Jones herself had been making homophobic and racist comments.
Finally, late Monday night, Jones issued a series of tweets lamenting the situation and explaining that she was leaving Twitter.