Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones has been forced to quit Twitter after she was bombarded with racist tweets and has urged the social networking site to take action. The Ghostbusters actress found herself the target of many offensive and hurtful posts, which were mainly directed at the color of her skin. Jones retweeted some of the messages, which included calling her an “ape,” a “big lipped coon” and “the source of AIDS.”
In a series of posts, she then wrote, “I feel like I’m in a personal hell. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now.” The 48-year-old actress also wrote, “I use[d]to wonder why some celebs don’t have Twitter accts now I know. You can’t be nice and communicate with fans cause people [sic] crazy.”
She pleaded with Twitter to do something about the racist trolls as she refused to ignore them, as many people had told her to. She said, “Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that. You can see on the…Profiles that some of these people are crazy sick. It’s not enough to freeze Acct. They should be reported. (sic). Eventually she signed off: “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— I got today … wrong.”
Ghostbusters director Paul Feig urged Leslie to stay on the social networking site and wrote, “Leslie Jones is one of the greatest people I know. Any personal attacks against her are attacks against us all,” and encouraged people to tweet their support for Jones under the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ.”
