Leslie Jones, the co-star of this year’s Ghostbusters movie and cast member of Saturday Night Live who was already hounded off Twitter last month by trolls, has been attacked again.
This time, the trolls defaced her personal website.
The attack was initially spotted by TMZ on Wednesday after images were posted of what appeared to be Jones’s passport, her driver’s license, and explicit photos of the actress.
The content entailed the same type of racist, sexist hate mongering that Jones was besieged with in July through Twitter. This time, the attackers inserted a video of the gorilla Harambe onto her site.
Harambe is the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was killed months ago: a reference to the racially charged gorilla remarks and photos directed at Jones in the earlier Twitter trolling.
The attackers also replaced the site’s content – which is usually information about her comedy career and film work – with images of her with stars like Rihanna, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West, according to the New York Times.
The site was taken offline after the attack.
Jones had already thrown in the towel on Twitter last month (though she briefly came back for a high-pitched “SLAY ALL DAY USA!!” campaign when NBC sent her down to Rio for the Olympics.)
The Twitter trolls had sent her a torrent of hate aimed at her race and her appearance.
Twitter responded by taking action against several users, including a rare lifetime ban against the politically conservative blogger Milo Yiannopoulos, who writes for Breitbart News. Yiannopoulos was accused of orchestrating the Twitter harassment.
Jones already has a hashtag in her honor – #StandWithLeslie. It’s been promoted by high-profile defenders, including Katy Perry and comedian Patton Oswalt, among others.
If 101% of pop culture catered to white nerds instead of only 98.1% then the cyber attacks like the one on Leslie Jones wouldn’t happen.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 24, 2016
Do not give your eyeballs to this racist, hate-filled, misogynoir crime. I #StandWithLeslie ❤️
— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) August 24, 2016
The fact of the matter is, Jones herself has stood up for targets of cyberbullying, including African American Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas.
Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and a professor of Criminology at Florida-Atlantic University, told the NYT that this was a righteous move that could have indirectly led to policy change on Twitter’s part.
But Jones’s decision to come back to Twitter and stay active on social media well might have set her up as a tempting target for the bullies and hackers, he said.
As it is, that lot relish picking at sore spots:
Some of those that cyberbully attempt to identify something that you’re particularly sensitive about, and because they know that it will get under your skin.
Or they’re just biased and intolerant, as perhaps was the case considering the racial hatred in some of the attacks on Leslie Jones.
Image of Leslie Jones courtesy of Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com
hamtownadmin
Yeah, it sucks getting hacked, but this girl is so racist herself. I can see the bias in this report and I’m waiting for, what will probably be, the real story.
Michael Spaulding
Yeah, not so funny when the shoe’s on the other foot. But hey, if you have to get your self gratification from Twitter, you’ve got much bigger problems than racism to deal with.
John
The racist stuff and hacking is inexcusable. My guess is when Milo got kicked from Twitter it showed their colors on speech. This angered the online hacktivists to take (over the top) action.
The Ghostbusters remake kicked a hornets nest. All thanks to the fool of a director.
tomi01uk (@tomi01uk)
@jack has destroyed Twitter by removing @nero and letting Leslie Jones continue to gloat about it. Really speaks for itself.
Magyver
Like you say Tom, there are two sides to every story. When Jones used her “Star Prestige” on @jack to get the hugely flamboyant and wildly popular white gay guy Milo suspended/banned from twitter it set off a fairly foreseeable chain of events.
His defenders see her action as involving censorship of the freedom of speech, reverse racism and gay-bashing.
Which side is right? Neither, but the entire matter was avoidable.
tomi01uk (@tomi01uk)
Obvious to anyone who followed the scenario it was little to do with @nero except for his followers being rough with Leslie, but she created a melodrama out of it and used Milo’s unflattering movie review as a pretext for the aftermath of insults that came from his followers and non-followers who agreed with the revue. Actually, practically everyone on the face of the earth agrees with Milo’s revue and sentiments except feminists… Why @jack banned @nero off Twitter could be coming out soon as documents have been requested from Twitter through the UK legal system.