I realize that I'm a little late to the party, but I just listened to a number of podcasts and videos featuring Megan Phelps-Roper. She's got quite a fascinating story.
I'll provide as much of a synopsis as I can - but if you've got some time, I highly recommend either her TED talk, which is about 15 minutes long, or her podcast interviews with Kevin Smith (about 2 hours) or Joe Rogan (3 hours).
She's the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, and was an active member of the Westboro Baptist Church for the first 27 years of her life.
From 2009 to 2012, when she left the church, she was the face of the church on social media. She ran the twitter accounts, engaged with people, and pushed the church's message of hatred to the outside world. Most of the responses she got were attacks, scorn and hatred - but her willingness to actually engage ended up spawning conversations with internet critics that lasted for years - which led in time to her exit from the church, and rejection of all of its doctrines.
Now she's married to one of her former twitter trolls.
It's rare that you hear a story like this about arguing on the internet. If you watch her TED talk, she makes a lot of arguments about how to interact with people that are particularly relevant to this board, as well as the political climate throughout the internet.
If you've got the time, here are the links:
TED Talk:
Kevin Smith's podcast:
Smodcast
Joe Rogan's podcast:
I'll provide as much of a synopsis as I can - but if you've got some time, I highly recommend either her TED talk, which is about 15 minutes long, or her podcast interviews with Kevin Smith (about 2 hours) or Joe Rogan (3 hours).
She's the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, and was an active member of the Westboro Baptist Church for the first 27 years of her life.
From 2009 to 2012, when she left the church, she was the face of the church on social media. She ran the twitter accounts, engaged with people, and pushed the church's message of hatred to the outside world. Most of the responses she got were attacks, scorn and hatred - but her willingness to actually engage ended up spawning conversations with internet critics that lasted for years - which led in time to her exit from the church, and rejection of all of its doctrines.
Now she's married to one of her former twitter trolls.
It's rare that you hear a story like this about arguing on the internet. If you watch her TED talk, she makes a lot of arguments about how to interact with people that are particularly relevant to this board, as well as the political climate throughout the internet.
If you've got the time, here are the links:
TED Talk:
Kevin Smith's podcast:
Smodcast
Joe Rogan's podcast: