‘Coon, ape’ tweets levelled at US actress

Leslie Jones arrives at the ELLE Women in Comedy Event at Hyde Sunset on June 7, 2016 in Los Angeles.

Leslie Jones arrives at the ELLE Women in Comedy Event at Hyde Sunset on June 7, 2016 in Los Angeles.

Published Jul 19, 2016

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Leslie Jones has been forced to quit Twitter after she was bombarded with racist tweets.

The 'Ghostbusters' actress found herself the target of many offensive and hurtful posts, which were mainly directed at the colour of her skin, but also included posts by a user pretending to be Jones, using slurs such as fa**ot.

Leslie 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 to wonder why some celebs don't have Twitter accts now I know. You can't be nice and communicate with fans cause people crazy. (sic)"

She also 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**t 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."

 

Bang Showbiz and IOL

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