> the incredible degree of hatred the black actress got

I really don't recall Leslie Jones receiving as much backlash as certain outlets purported. Part of that is because that, for these outlets (common offenders including Slate and its ilk), any amount of backlash or derision, or frankly, anything less than glowing praise is "racism". And now that the word "racism" is starting to lose power, they've moved on to "white supremacy", but that's another topic...

I think you could be on to something, but the bulk of the backlash was because they butchered an absolute classic comedy that millions of people grew up watching (I myself have probably seen it over 50 times, my Mom said I watched it over and over as a kid).

> I really don't recall Leslie Jones receiving as much backlash as certain outlets purported.

> Today in awful news, Leslie Jones’s personal website has been taken down after being targeted by a vicious hack. Hackers infiltrated the site with what appeared to be naked photos of the comedian, as well as images of her passport and driver’s license, private photos of her with various celebrities, and a photo of dead gorilla (and meme that refuses to die) Harambe. ... Last month, the comedian’s Twitter account was inundated with racist and sexist hate speech associated with her role in Paul Feig’s inexplicably controversial all-female Ghostbusters reboot, and Twitter pledged to reform their harassment policies in response.

https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/a-timeline-of-leslie-joness-h...

You can find screenshots of the trolls' tweets here: https://splinternews.com/how-a-racist-sexist-hate-mob-forced...

"Ok I have been called Apes, sent pics of their asses, even got a pic with semen on my face. I'm trying to figure out what human means. I'm out"

https://www.popbuzz.com/life/news/leslie-jones-racist-tweets...

It's probably hard for any of us to know the actual ratios, because only a filtered version of what's out there penetrates our bubbles.

I think with hot-button topics like this there's usually a race-to-the-bottom spiral of reaction and counter-reaction, with each side being fed the dumbest or most offensive arguments from the other side and reacting to them; then the other side sees a (likewise filtered for stupidity or outrageousness) selection of the responses and reacts to them, and so on.

Everyone is constantly escalating in response to the extreme fringe on the other side, while seeing a more representative sample of views from their own side -- which they are probably biased toward interpreting charitably, as well as no-true-Scotsmanning away the worst examples. So we're all constantly baffled by why the weirdos on the other side are overreacting so hard.

Exactly. This is why I phrase observations from my own point of view and avoid implying a broad category like Republican/liberal/etc when I criticize some opinion that has a significant presence in my visible universe.

I don't care if it was headlined by four white dudes - the "dialog" was crap, the plot was a lazy rehash of the original with zero lack of comedic timing or skill.

Neither gender or race has anything to do with it being a lazy, uninspired and un-funny movie - but people are sure as hell desperate to use that as a shield from criticism :p

They wanted the overreaction, this entire controversy was nothing more but a marketing trick. Sony was deleting top comments with constructive critique from their YouTube video and leaving up only the abusive ones so it would appear as if people hated this movie only because they're sexist or whatever. And that worked, deciding to see or not to see this movie was pretty much a political statement.