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 thought the Joe Rogan guy was unnecessarily confrontational. As if he were trying to goad his subject into regressing to her former state. Specifically in the police protection for First Amendment segment. She held her own though. The TED talk was far more useful.
Rogan is Rogan, he's always like that. He defends his opinions, and he can be stubborn. He's a smart guy though, and I don't think he pushed her that hard.
Keep on mind, she's used to people pushing back against her opinions - that's the whole point of the story, I think. I don't think Rogan was rude or anything.
I agree he wasn't rude -- more at crude. He doesn't appear that smart, or much of an interviewer, and his point, at least in that section, was severely flawed. I think she deserves better.
But enough about that, it's not a thread about Joe Rogan.
I would have liked to hear more about what became of her sister. I remember a few years ago when they left. Wiki says two of their brothers have left as well.
I wondered about her sister as well - her name is Grace, you can google her.
According to her twitter feed, she's in Bangladesh, on the Myanmar border, helping Rohingya refugees.
I see where the two of them spoke to an ADL conference at Penn two years ago. Didn't find a video of it.
From that page:
>> The night before Megan and Grace Phelps-Roper left the church that had meant everything to them, relative after relative streamed into their rooms, crying. Megan Phelps-Roper was trying to pack when a beloved cousin walked in, stone-faced, and told her she was going to hell. <<
--- reminded me of my own cousin's story about how when she was growing up her grandmother (and mine) would brush her hair while calmly informing my cousin that she would be going to hell because her mother married a Catholic.
Some of this stuff isn't as far away as we like to think.