Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

by Megan Phelps-Roper

At the time I had been vaguely aware of the changes that communication on Twitter was working in me, but it was only in hindsight that its effects became clear. The 140-character limit caused me to drastically cut back on my use of insults, which Westboro members made a habit of stringing together in long, alliterative lists: “bombastic, blowhard, bigmouth, bimbo, bastard.” Not only was there no space for insults in tweets, there was also an almost immediate feedback loop: unlike with email, I could watch a Twitter conversation derail in real time whenever I included personally disparaging language. The exchange would swiftly devolve from a theological debate to a playground quarrel. It became clear to me that causing offense with needless ad hominem attacks did nothing to communicate our core message, and I learned to avoid it. Hostile tweeters became almost like a game to me, and I delighted in learning to use humor, pop culture, and self-deprecation to diffuse and disarm antagonism. To change the nature of the conversation and convey our message in a way that outsiders could better hear it. The tongue might be a fire, I was learning, but it didn’t always have to be.