It is possible to think of sexting only as a pervy symptom of modern-day smartphone courtship, but for the verbose and the horny it is a common point of intimacy in our over-connected world. As a writer and a warm-blooded woman, I’ve dabbled in the art of the sext here and there, and sending horny DMs to a crush can make you feel like a teenager all over again, clumsy and full of risky feelings. But sexting can also be a nice flint for the fire with a current partner, a little something to look forward to at the end of the day.  I don’t have to tell you about how sexting is fun and sexy. You know.

In the wake of Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine's sexts leaking, the Internet has had an absolute field day of meme-ing his truly silly-sounding exclamations about hot Instagram user Sumner Stroh, who exposed their sext-ual affair on TikTok. (After Levine DMed Stroh for her blessing in naming his incoming baby after her.) (His baby with his hot model wife Behati Prinsloo.) 

This all feels like none of my business, but while the idea of publicly exposing such intimate materials is collectively frowned-upon, there seems to be an implicit exception for famous men with hot wives. If you’re a famous man with a way-hot wife, disrespecting her seems to make you fair game for cyberbullying. And because of Levine’s transgressions, we are all now forced to know against our collective will how this man sexts. But while “I may need to see the booty” is a little cringe, it's really only because all sexts are. 

The medium is the message. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a sext, you can basically tell just how horny the sender is for you by how clumsily inelegant it is. Something about heightened sexual desire makes even the most powerful people and the most eloquent writers turn into grammatically-iffy and typographcially hazardous simps. 

Remember when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s sexts were revealed to be just as fumblingly horny as the next tax-paying civilian? He has never been more human than when he was awkwardly lustful for a former host of So You Think You Can Dance. And you can be one of the world's greatest living novelists and still spell hot with three Ts, hottt, in a thirsty Facebook message. Again, this is none of my business! If nothing else, it’s humanizing in its silliness, a glimpse of one’s playful vulnerability. And for all I know, clumsy yearning from one of the richest men on earth got the “alive girl” on the other end wetter than Lake Baikal. 

Sexting is an inherently vulnerable exchange. It exposes our thirstiest, pixelated desires. And what’s more vulnerable than an expression of unadulterated, unembellished wanting? You’re basically co-authoring erotic fan fiction at another person with the urgency of whoever has the least restraint, the eroticism often rapidly expiring in the event of orgasm. Sexting makes micro-pornographers of us all. And it can make for some fond memories too.

But in that post-nut clarity that befalls most of us as soon as heartrates have dropped, if you dare scroll upwards days, weeks, or months later and reread the transcripts out of context, your heart might drop again—this time right into your stomach. You will be confronted with whatever your thumbs were possessed to type in service of satiating your libido’s appetites. Spotting a typo is a sledgehammer to my mental wellbeing. The very passing thought of having my sexts leaked makes me want to self-immolate.

It’s stomach-churning enough just thinking about the dumb things I say to my local barista trying to make friendly conversation. I do not need a script of my innermost thirst lying in wait for some hypothetical hacker or snooper to tee-hee at, at my expense. Sometimes you may just have to scorch it all. 

Hot as they can be, sexts are inherently ephemeral, like the lingering light of a fiery shooting star reduced to space dust long before its journey is done. That’s just the nature of the thing—they age like hot milk. And any lewd messages sent past their expired contexts must be regarded with either generous empathy and affection for your own lust, or else scrubbed from digital memory with the understanding that you are not the person you were one orgasm ago. 

I take a bit of comfort in the endearment of knowing that so far as we know, no one is immune to the witless influence of desire and sexual gratification—no matter how powerful or important. We’re all fools for love (or lust) at one time or another. It is, if nothing else, an equalizer, and if you swipe enough (or just make eyes at a bar), our most intimate vulnerabilities can find a haven in another. 

But also: Somewhere out there, endless logs of potential thirsty liabilities live in the cloud, waiting to debase future iPhone models with yesterday’s filth. And if you’re sexting outside the bounds of your monogamous arrangement, keep in mind that nothing is truly discreet when screenshots exist. 

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