- Write a brief summary, using your words and direct quotes, of Megan Phelps-Roper’s personal transformation, as described in Chen’s piece. Be sure to include 2-3 direct quotes (with proper MLA citations) that illuminate changes Phelps-Roper experienced along the way.
In the beginning of the article Unfollow, Megan Phelps- Rogers volunteered to tweet for the congregation. She had very strong views about how she hated gay people and picketed paritcular funerals. She would tweet about these events, one of her tweets after Ted Kennedy died being, “He defied god at every turn, teaching rebellion against His laws. Ted’s in hell!” Her tweets were opinionated, rude and not very subtle, yet she continued to gain lots of twitter followers and continue this behavior. Although as the article comes to an end, so does her negative mindset. She begins to show a change of character as she starts to question her past views, “What if the God of the Bible isn’t the God of creation? We don’t believe that the Koran has the truth about God. Is it just because we were told forever that this is How Things Are?” After she has this realization with her sister, Grace, they then move out and rebuild a life of their own. She was aware of the negative tweets and words associated with her name but was willing to still try and change.
2. In your opinion, how did social media embolden Phelps-Roper’s initial message as a spokesperson for Westboro Baptist Church? How did interactions via social media influence her drastic shift in personal belief? Use at least two direct quotes, framed with help from Ch. 3 of They Say/I Say), to support your claims.
In recent discussion of social media embolden Phelps rogers initial message, a controversial issue has been whether it did or not. On the one hand some argue that it did make her message stronger. From this perspective it could be seen that posted on social media got her message out to more people faster, emboldening it. On the other hand, however, others argue that it may not have made her message stronger, In the words of Phelps-Rogers, she was “inundated with tweets and new followers. That month she tweeted more than two thousand times; by the end of the month, she had more than seven thousand followers.” According to this view, it seems to show that using social media did seem to increase the power behind her message. My own view is also that social media did make her message as a spokesperson stronger. Though I concede that social media did in fact embolden her message, I still maintain an understanding of how some may say it didn’t. For example, social media does not always make people think clearly, making what they say not always true, and Megan found it “easy to ignore her doubt amid the greater publicity that Westboro was receiving.” Although some might object that social media had a big effect on her, I would reply that it most definitely did and without the use of twitter and her tweeting for the congregation, the rest of Megan’s story would not have been as intricate as it ended up being. This issue is important because sometimes people don’t realize the effect that social media has on those who use it, when something as simple as hitting send on a tweet can really be a big thing after all.
3. “Anybody’s initial response to being confronted with the sort of stuff Westboro Baptist Church says is to tell them to f*** off,” said blogger David Abitbol (Chen 79). But it was less-aggressive communication styles that “got through” to Phelps-Roper, that in part influenced her to reconsider her belief system. What style(s) of conversation (consider message, tone, perspective) had the most impact on Phelps-Roper? What might her story teach us about confronting hate speech? What about redemption?
I agree that it was the less aggressive messages that seemed to get through to Megan. Her first thought to change happened casually when she was listening to a song C.G had recommended to her. C.G was the mystery man that Megan talked to online who kind of had a huge impact on her because it was something as small as a song recommendation that helped sway her mindset. I think that the way Megan slowly changed and began to put herself together shows that confronting hate speech doesn’t have to be done in such an over the top, aggressive way. The fact that as she changed, people on twitter supported her continues to show that if done respectfully, it is possible to redeem yourself.
4. If you were to meet Phelps-Roper today, what question would you want to ask her, and why?
I would ask her if she had always had a feeling that the choices she was making were wrong or if it really was a kind of sudden switch. I would ask this because I can’t imagine she really always thought like this.
