Leslie Jones has had enough.
On Monday afternoon, the Ghostbusters star and Saturday Night Live cast member tweeted that she was tired of receiving constant harassing messages with overt racist and sexist imagery.
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755072841708625920
Jones announced that she was going to stop blocking her Twitter harassers so that their tweets and comments could be seen publicly in order to expose their offensive nature.
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755126377691680768
Jones—whose summer blockbuster remake of the classic 1980s film has enraged sexist men due to its all-female cast—then began to retweet some of the most vile messages directed her way. Many of them compared Jones to an ape or monkey, called her ugly, used racist slurs like n**ger or ‘savage,’ or repeatedly conflated her with slain zoo animal Harambe.
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755161629793345536
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755152243264028672
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755140951065190400
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755139874412498944
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755137579985563648
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755132080934322177
Almost immediately after seeing the slew of retweets (as well as the fresh piles of hot, racist garbage comments that followed every single one of Jones’ tweets), fans sprung into action, reporting the accounts en masse in an attempt to get Twitter’s safety team to remove them all for violating guidelines.
But as many of Jones’ supportive fans pointed out, when one troll account is blocked another one arises to replace it.
https://twitter.com/PatTrudeau/status/755165608795181056
Jones went off on many of her harassers, repeatedly giving them a piece of her mind before blocking and reporting the offending accounts, and a number of supporters began using the hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ.
But the incident raised a question that has been asked over and over for years: Why aren’t there better anti-harassment protections in place on social media?
Just after midnight, Jones said she was leaving Twitter. It was unclear whether she meant for now or forever.
https://twitter.com/Lesdoggg/status/755271004520349698
The Daily Dot reached out to Jones for further comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Update 7:39pm CT, July 19: Includes Jones’s latest tweet about leaving Twitter.
