Vicious online abuse against ‘Ghostbusters’ actress Leslie Jones uncalled for – and frightening

Earlier this week, actress Leslie Jones was the target of horrible racist and misogynistic attacks on Twitter. I mean this stuff was jaw-droppingly atrocious and sickening.

Jones is one of the female stars of the new “Ghostbusters” reboot, which had its fair share of pouty naysayers in the first place. First because a “Ghostbusters” reboot was even happening (come on, the original movie was not “Gone with the Wind”), and then because it was being made with an all-female cast of Jones, Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon. Get. A. Life.

The film has had some mixed reviews, although its Rotten Tomatoes score is a solid 73 percent (I haven’t seen it yet). But the vicious hate aimed at Jones seems to have spawned from a review written by Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative blogger who writes for Breitbart.com and goes by the Twitter handle @nero.

In his review, he called Jones “spectacularly unappealing” and that her “Ghostbusters” character had “flat-as-a-pancake black stylings.” It only got more vicious and juvenile from there.

He then posted on Twitter a meme that pictured a caricature of one of the female characters with the headline: “Who ya gonna call? Weightwatchers!” Believe me, the visual is far worse than the words.

It’s a thoroughly disgusting exhibition of cruelty and tastelessness. That followed with other online trolls joining in who posted a stream of pornography, racist remarks and hateful memes, all tagged with Jones’ Twitter handle @lesdoggg, which means the posts showed up on her feed.

Jones took to Twitter to battle the trolls and tweeted, “Exposing I hope y’all go after them like they going after me.”

Several users compared her to apes, including Harambe, the male gorilla who was shot dead at a Cincinnati zoo. Someone even created a fake Twitter account that had the actress spewing hateful language, which spawned even more unbelievably horrible comments.

Jones then Tweeted, “THIS WAS NOT ME!! OK TWITTER IM DONE!! IF YALL CAN LET THIS (expletive) HAPPEN I DONT WANT TO BE HERE.”

Some supporters, including “Ghostbusters” director Paul Feig, took to Twitter to defend Jones with the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ.

Feig tweeted, “Leslie Jones is one of the greatest people I know. Any personal attacks against her are attacks against us all.”

But it was understandably too much for Jones ultimately to bear. Late Monday night, she signed off from Twitter, saying “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 (expletive) I got today … wrong.”

Twitter finally – finally – intervened on Tuesday, permanently banning Yiannopoulos from Twitter, saying he violated their terms of service.

The company said in a statement, “Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension.”

Jones responded with a tweet: “Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that.”

Absolutely! Twitter let the abuse go on far too long and with no reprimand for those involved. And if it let this abuse go on so long, what other abuse is it overlooking? To people who are not celebrities?

Reading Jones’ feed is upsetting enough to cause tears. Because I cannot fathom who would think it’s OK to say that stuff to someone. And in such a cowardly way. When did we become such an anonymously vicious society?

At one point, Jones tweeted: “I’m tryin to figure out what human means.”

It certainly wasn’t this, Ms. Jones. And I’m not sure I would call those that participated human, anyway.

This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Vicious online abuse against ‘Ghostbusters’ actress Leslie Jones uncalled for – and frightening."