Marcel Thee

Blog Shows Why Texting While Drunk is a Bad Idea

Remember that text you shouldn’t have sent last night? We do.”

This is the tagline for Texts From Last Night, a blog that compiles sometimes funny, sometimes raunchy text messages, usually sent during a night of heavy drinking.

The Web site shows the area code, followed by the text, which affords anonymity to senders.

Posts such as “[310] ohhhh ****. [The] chick’s a dude,” which most probably caused the sender to cringe the next day, can be rated by anyone who stumbles onto the site with “bad night” or “good night,” illustrated by a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon.

Michigan friends Ben Bator and Lauren Leto launched the blog in February.

“Well, it was kind of the result of a few really good weekends,” Bator said.

“Lauren and I would always forward each other texts … when we’d wake up in the morning. We’d send it to all of our friends, kind of like ‘guess who sent this last night?’ ”

The site was an instant hit, averaging four million visitors a day. By August the two had scored a book deal with the Gotham Books imprint of Penguin and by September the Fox television network had announced the launch of a sitcom based on the blog. The premiere date of the TV show has yet to be released, but the book is due out in January.

According to Bator, the book will contain messages from the “Worst Nights of All Time” section of the blog, such as [314] “So I went on a date with this girl … and who’s our waitress? My girlfriend got a second job she didn’t tell me about to afford my bday present”; “I just walked in on my mom and dad … It wasn’t my dad”; and [212] “I want you now,” with the reply, [916] “You need to stop dating girls with the same name as your mother … or stop drinking so much … I don’t want to see this.” There will also be previously unpublished material.

Eric Wiryanata, co-founder of Deathrockstar, an Indonesia-based music Web site that “prides itself on showing Indonesia’s hidden [musical] treasures [to the world],” said he is a frequent visitor to Texts From Last Night and other user-generated Web sites.

Wiryanata said he found the blog funny, but didn’t like the idea of Indonesian bloggers creating their own versions.

“It’s just a fun distraction if they have [those kinds of Web sites] in America or something,” he said, “because they already have a large number of great, serious, informative Web sites at hand. But if it becomes a trend here, I don’t think that will be good. It would be a waste of bandwidth.”

Rangga Sastrowardoyo, who runs the blog Nguping Jakarta (Eavesdropping Jakarta), thinks there is nothing wrong with a Web site offering humor without any social commentary.

“Sometimes it’s good just to laugh. Why be angry all the time?” he said.

“We should not be stuck on seriousness. Sometimes humor holds an intrinsic value. It can comment on social conditions in a real and critical manner.”

Rangga said Web sites such as Texts From Last Night serve to document the way people live in 2009.

“On our Web site [Nguping Jakarta], you can see how social interactions have changed. The younger generation is much more courageous and opinionated in expressing themselves today,” he said.

Bator said the messages on Texts From Last Night stemmed from “general debauchery and/or a common disgust for all the negativity surrounding the ‘sexting’ phenomenon.”

“Sexting” is a portmanteau of “sex” and “texting” and refers to the act of communicating sexually explicit information via text, mostly by cellphone.

This often results in uncomfortably funny and vulgar messages, such as one about a couple on a floor and a curious dog, which is not suitable to be retold in a newspaper.

The Web site’s founders may have started by compiling their friends’ and their own messages, but the site grew through submissions from visitors and fans, which Bator says reach “10 to 15,000 a day.”

Texts From Last Night has also created applications for smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone that enable owners to automatically connect to the site. It also has an online store, a Facebook page and a Twitter site.

But how does a reader know if the entries are real?

Leto says, “There’s no way of knowing. But we just think to ourselves whether any of our friends have been in a similar situation — and then, if so, we post it.”

Bator adds, “It’s hard to tell, because people could make stuff up. But really, at the end of the day, if you can send it to [the Web site], it’s still a real text message, it happened.”

He continues, “We don’t lose sleep over that part. If it makes us laugh, if it can relate to people, well, then we put it up.”

With only three official “employees” (Bator, Leto and Bator’s younger brother), Texts From Last Night’s instant success might require additional help to sort the numerous submissions. Bator and Leto have quit college to work on the Web site full time.

“It didn’t cost much to [create the Web site] — we had a lot of talented friends to help us with the design” Bator said.

But the site’s racy content makes them both a little wary of telling people how they make a living.

“Is this the first thing that we say to someone we’re sitting next to on a plane with a Bible in hand? No,” Leto said. “But we’re really proud of it.”

Texting the Truth: Indonesian Style
Marcel Thee & Katrin Figge

Texts From Last Night collects text messages from the United States, but Indonesians have their share of humorous text stories.

Nina, 31, likes to go out with friends and drink, mostly beer. Aware of her own tendency to send out text messages when drunk, she buries her phone in her bag for two reasons — to make it harder to locate when she is drunk, and to minimize her chances of losing the phone.

Sometimes her strategy works, sometimes it doesn’t.

The most embarrassing text message she can recall was one she sent to a man she had a crush on.

“I was already drunk and I asked him to have a drink with me,” Nina said.

“He said, ‘Sorry, I can’t but I’ll be free next week, so I’ll see you later.’ ” Her reply was a flirty, “Okey-dokey, I’ll kiss you later,” to which the response was, “My girlfriend will kill me if you do that.”

Not being wise (or sober) enough to leave it at that, Nina’s drunken reply was, “I am a killer, I kill people for money. But because she’s your girlfriend, I’ll kill her for nothing.”

The man subsequently married his girlfriend and moved to Singapore, but still sent Nina an invitation to the wedding.

Nina admits that she sometimes picks fights with her current boyfriend via text message when she’s drunk.

“Usually that happens when I remember something about him that was upsetting me,” she said.

“Then I suddenly [text] him and the next day we have an argument.” Fortunately, she said, her boyfriend knows when it is the booze talking, not her.

Nina also sends text messages to people she is actually out with or even to the bartender to order another drink.

Hening said she finds the belief that people tell the truth when drunk to be true. For that reason, the 38-year-old enjoys sending texts “after I’ve had a couple of drinks.” She said she tells good friends that she loves and cares about them, or, depending on how much she has drunk, she also sends messages to men she likes or to ex-boyfriends.

“Once, I was on my way home from a bar and I was very upset with my ex, with whom I had broken up shortly before,” she said. “So I asked him, quite rudely, to erase my number from his phone and to never contact me again.” The next morning, she said, she regretted her actions and apologized.

“It depends on my mood, really,” Hening said. “When I’m in a bad mood, I might send out messages to try and pick a fight. When I am in a good mood, things can get a little flirty.”

For 29-year old Dina (not her real name), texting under the influence can lead to huge misunderstandings.

“I once was in love with this guy,” Dina said. “But since I wasn’t sure if he felt the same, I was afraid to tell him, until [one day] I was drunk, and suddenly had the courage to tell him. So I texted him to let him know that I liked him.”

Dina’s love interest misunderstood her motive, and thought she was simply wanting to “hook up.” He suggested getting together later that night.

“He thought I was drunk and didn’t realize that my feelings were real,” she said. “These are the flaws of texting — you can’t see the other person’s face, you can’t guess by simply reading a text message. It is so much better to have a real conversation, but for some people it is hard, because they are too shy.”

Your View

See Result