Though originally a power player in the WBC’s social media campaign against, well, everything, Megan Phelps began to see her Twitter interactions as windows into lives very different than hers. After making friends online and growing disillusioned with the increasingly reactionary leadership inside the church, Megan began to consider leaving the group with her sister Grace.
Leaving wasn’t easy. It meant, in part, entering a world the Phelps sisters were little familiar with, and suffering total isolation from the only community they had ever known. The inimitable Adrian Chen has the rest. For a glimpse into the life Megan and Grace left, Louis Theroux’s BBC documentary The Most Hated Family in America is available online.