Comedian Leslie Jones is receiving lots of praise for a blistering rant on Saturday Night Live aimed straight at the hackers and Twitter trolls who have made her life difficult over the past few months. Hackers have stolen private photos of her and posted them on the internet, and she was also subject to lots of racist online abuse that even led her to briefly quit Twitter. But when Jones went on a Weekend Update segment to talk about cyberterrorism, she managed to take her personal experiences and turn them into a hilarious and poignant takedown of people who try to make others’ lives miserable.
“All they did was release some nude pics of me,” Jones told Colin Jost, “which is nothing because, I don’t know if y’all know this about me, but I ain’t shy … I am very comfortable with who I am. I am an open book. I keep my porn in a folder labeled ‘porn.’ If you wanna see Leslie Jones naked, just ask!”
“What I’m trying to say is, if you wanna hurt anybody these days, you’re gonna have to do way more than leak their nudes or call them names—you can’t embarrass me more than I have embarrassed myself. I know all the details, ’cause I was there,” she said. Jones then went on to describe a few of her life’s embarrassing moments, before making a slight pivot and talking to the trolls who have attacked her mercilessly on Twitter.
“Do you think some words on the internet can hurt me? I once had a crazy bitch try to beat me with a shovel at a bus stop because I took her spot on the bench. Now that’s a troll. Real trolls ain’t tapping on keyboards, they’re swinging shovels,” she said.
And Jones ended with a message that, while hilarious, was also very poignant and seems to provide a great life lesson for us all: “I have spent decades getting roasted by comedians,” she said. “Trust me, at a certain point, you stop being embarrassed and start being you. And I have been me for 49 years. Because the only person who can hack me is me, and my firewall is a crazy bitch with a shovel.”
Lots of people online are praising Jones for her rant.
“That may’ve been Leslie Jones’ finest #SNL moment,” wrote Michael Ausiello, editor in chief of TVLine.