Leslie Jones has the perfect metaphor to explain Twitter abuse
Ever since Leslie Jones was cast in the new Ghostbusters reboot, the Saturday Night Live cast member has had to deal with haters even more twisted and racist than those attacking her costars. That fuckery came to a head earlier this week when she was faced with a deluge of truly horrifying internet animosity coming from people (men) who are for some reason called “trolls” when they’re actually sociopathic bigots.
For the record, this is not an uncommon experience for black women and other women of color on the internet, but this time they fucked with the wrong woman. After Jones put the spotlight on her abusers, posting screenshots of just a fraction of the horrible things they were sending her, Twitter finally, finally, took some action, deleting various accounts involved in this mess including that of resident Troll-in-Chief and alt-right hero Milo Yiannopoulos for inciting his followers to attack Jones.
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Last night, Jones went on Late Night with Seth Meyers to clarify that she hadn’t left Twitter and discuss how terrifying it is to have a group of people dedicated to hatred coming at her—although neither Jones nor Meyers technically used the word “racist” to describe these attacks. She also came up with a pretty brilliant metaphor for dealing with the situation on one of her favorite social media outlets:
“It’s like that’s my favorite restaurant. I love the food there. Three people just got shot in front of me. Y’all need to get some security.”Also, rule of thumb: “Hate speech and freedom of speech: two different things.”