While the identity of the hacker(s) who vandalized Leslie Jones‘ website hasn’t been confirmed, they seemingly waited until the comedian’s star was shining brightest to try and dim it.
Jones’ Twitter following grew by 217,434 during the Olympics. That means it nearly doubled in the span of two and a half weeks — thanks to her raucous live-tweeting — from a little over 200,000 to more than 550,000. (Her follower count now stands at 551,899.)
Over the 17 days of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Jones sent 1,704 tweets. Those tweets were good for 276 million impressions, meaning they appeared in 276 million feeds. Her videos were viewed 35 million times. (Slight caveat that Twitter counts anything more than three seconds as a “view.”)
The ostensible motive behind the Wednesday morning attack on Leslie Jones‘ website appears to be the fact that her exposé of horrifying racism and misogyny directed at her on Twitter led to the platform’s ban of Milo Yiannopoulos, a Breitbart editor whose myriad followers occasionally resemble a troll army.
The “Ghostbusters” star appeared to quit Twitter after initially receiving a less-than-satisfactory response to the abuse from Twitter’s brass, though she explained it as more of a hiatus. After conversing with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, she was back in form, just in time to make a huge impact on the platform during the Olympics.
Jones’ live-blogging of her Rio viewing experience drew the attention of NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell, who arranged for the “SNL” cast member to fly out to Rio on Aug. 8.
@shoemakermike OK @Lesdoggg you’re officially invited to Rio. Want to come?
— Jim Bell (@jfb) August 7, 2016
For those who hadn’t been following her in the past on the social media network, the joy of experiencing Jones watching any kind of suspenseful television event was revealed on a “Late Night with Seth Meyers” bit in June, in which Jones joined Meyers to watch an episode of “Game of Thrones” that she had seen, but he hadn’t.