Your Dreams Have Been Answered: This App Can Delete Your Drunk Texts

Here’s something you probably didn’t need me to clarify/actually articulate since you reasonably inferred it from all the posts I write about wine, pizza, and banning men: I don’t handle breakups particularly well. I am known for liberally using the phrase “taking a break” when it is clear to everyone around me (my friends, my mom, the cat that I cling to too tightly at night) that I was explicitly dumped. My Spotify account is set to “private session” for three months so no one knows that I’m listening to Sarah McLachlan’s “Building a Mystery” on repeat. I draw a lot of baths. I google affirmations. I make ~*my girls~* gather around me and assure me that They Who Shall Not Be Named “wasn’t worth it,” “never deserved me,” and “will probably come crawling back in a few months since they’ll be a mess without me.” At that point, Phase 2 is initiated: wearing my freakum dress to the club and writing hyperbolic Facebook statuses about alllll the single fun I’m having. This combination of public alcohol consumption, aggressive lies, and sexual frustration always leads to one thing: drunk texting. If you’ve never sent an ill-advised, whiskey-soaked text to your ex containing just three terrible, embarrassing words — “I miss you” — then you are not a real human being.

Well the tech world has finally devised a way to best even the most bad decision-prone mind: Ansa is a new messaging app that allows you to send self-destructing photos, videos, and texts as well as delete offending messages from another person’s device before they even see it. Essentially it’s the only thing standing in the way of a millennial Road Trip sequel. Or, to use a much-beloved tech world paradigm: it’s like Snapchat…but for texting!

Created by 23-year-old Natalie Bryla of San Francisco (yessss, a young woman killing it in a STEM field *releases doves*), Ansa allows users to conduct “off-the-record” chats, which means that full conversations will automatically disappear from both phones and the Ansa server. You can also customize your self-destruct timer, choosing the amount of time your message will exist before it disappears forever. But the most thrilling feature is the ability to go takesies-backsies on all sent media — using synced deletion, Ansa lets you remove messages you already shared.

Granted, Ansa’s magic only applies to the messages you send within the app itself — so the nonsensical sexts about your kinky Clarissa Explains It All fantasy that you send over iMessage are still your responsibility — but we think startups catering to drunk people are the wave of the future! Just imagine a world in which an app reminds you to close your tab and pick up your debit card before you stumble out of the club, an app lets you know which bar is currently blasting Rihanna, an app that automatically freezes your bank account when you are about to buy $50 worth of tequila shots for “all of your new friends,” a Grindr-like app that alerts you to the nearest person with cigarettes. Isn’t that the wonderful world that Louis Armstrong sings about?! Oh, no? Well, HE FUCKING SHOULD HAVE.