Ghostbusters: Leslie Jones Suffers Racial Abuse From POS Trolls
It's only a film.
There's a problem with free speech. It's become the banner for racists, offensive trolls and threatening, disgusting neckbeards who think being the equivalent of an audienceless shock jock is an aspirational career move. Unfortunately, social media is their playground, thanks in part to a lack of adequate moderation and in part to the card-carrying Defenders Of Liberty who insist free speech for everyone is an absolute must.
When you act the way an awfully big slice of Twitter has been to Leslie Jones - whose only crime appears to be being in the Ghostbusters reboot - I don't care who you are, you should lose your freedom to say what you want. There should be a caveat - freedom of speech that isn't hate speech or harmful or dangerous or motivated to cause pain perhaps - but as long as there are people like Milo Yiannopoulos who measure themselves only in provocation, it's impossible.
Milo - a shock jock columnist with a penchant for wild statements and a self-confessed desire to be considered a supervillain - has become a focal point in a strange, unnecessary battle with Leslie Jones. He criticised Ghostbusters, and Jones' role in particular (not wrongly, actually, as his points about stereotpying are on the button), but then proceeded to notice that Jones was being attacked on Twitter.
He did what any self-respecting journalist would do....
"Playing the victim" isn't really the right word for defending oneself against racial and sexist abuse, though is it Milo? Had you looked past your agenda to get some views to your review (which unsurprisingly devolved into a denouncement of feminism because AGENDA), you might notice there's a human victim involved.
Needless to say, it escalated, Jones blocked and reported Milo and he sicked his followers on her (of course he'll say he didn't), and that snowballed into some pieces of sh*t editing fake tweets to make it appear that Jones had tweeted some pretty heinous racism herself. Unfortunately, Jones' humanity did what anyone's would and she attempted to defend herself, which simply fuelled the trolling and abuse and she was left devastated...
How exactly is this ok? The racism is unforgivable. The sexism is unforgivable. The sexual harassment is unforgivable. But there's something even more worrying in the ability of certain people on social media to revel in a currency of pain. People who like to consider themselves witty hand-grenades and "truth-bringers" who are no more than bigots and try-hard attention seekers. It's utterly deplorable, particularly given that this all stems from a film. From a vehicle for entertainment built on something as innocent as make believe.
Paul Feig inevitably came to Jones' aid in a way that he absolutely should not have had to.
And no doubt Milo and his followers will take the fact that everyone is talking about their behaviour as another victory for their attention seeking. If their actions weren't so harmful, that would just be tragic.
Jones is no stranger to racial controversy, having been embroiled in some a number of times for jokes about slavery and some of her language choices on Twitter (which trolls are currently using as "evidence" against her). But to target someone in such a specific, dehumanising way and then to laugh from the shadows is cowardly and unforgivable. Twitter is the last bastion of society's self-obsessed hecklers and unfortunately their lack of control over such behaviour (and a worrying lack of a zero tolerance law based on free speech and the sanctity of humour) has made it worse.