Adrien Chen tells the story about Meagan Phelps-Roper and her involvement in the Westboro Baptist Church. The essay reads as a straight biography. But is Chen making an argument “between the lines” here? What is it?
I think that for an article about Phelps-Roper leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, a lot of it is taken up by her interactions with other people. Chen decided to leave in the parts about Arbitol and C.G. because it showed who and what led to her changing her mind. At one point in the article Phelps-Roper said that she only kept responding to a twitter guy (maybe it was C.G) because he stopped being hostile and was actually trying to talk to her.
Also, what is your reaction to Phelps-Roper’s story? Should we even give attention to this group, even the members who’ve defected?Are you at all sympathetic to her story?
I didn’t have a strong reaction to “Unfollowed”. I had seen a TED Talk Phelps-Roper had given so I was familiar with the story; and while I did find it interesting, a lot of the text wasn’t about Phelps-Roper leaving the church, it was about twitter.
I don’t know if we should be giving attention to Westboro, it seemed that every time in the story they got public backlash, they were happy that they were getting the publicity. Defected members should have the opportunity to share their story, I think we should be happy that people are leaving the organization and they should be treated fairly and welcomed into the “real world”.
I am sympathetic to her story, but I think Chen went out of his way to make Phelps-Roper seem different from the rest of the group, even when she was an active member. I’m sure she said an incredible amount of terrible things about Jewish and gay people, it just wasn’t mentioned.
