Behold This Treasure Trove Of Mistaken Text Messages


There’s a strange quirk in US carrier Verizon’s text messaging system. When entering a recipient, if their phone number doesn’t pop up with their name and you send it anyway, it may go to someone else. That someone else is often Leila.

Meet Leila Sales. She writes novels for young adults under Simon Schuster, and since early 2007 she has received thousands of text messages from strangers which were intended for other Leilas. Why does this happen? Because Verizon made her leila@vtext.com. She didn’t ask to be, it just sort of magically happened. Whenever somebody tries to write to their friend Leila they type in her first name, and if auto-fill doesn’t kick in to link up the contact, that message goes to Leila Sales. She averages about five of these texts every day. Like any creative person would do, she’s started a blog highlighting her favourites and providing some commentary. It’s a hilarious world of sex, drugs, affairs and teenage drama. And they come in all sorts of flavours. We’ve culled a few prime examples below:

The Insecure Cheater:

this is gonna sound terrible, but would u do what we did last night with someone while we were together? cause even if we didnt kiss u know we did stuff

The Awkward Break-Up:

“Hey.i dont think we should go out anymore.we dont talk or hang out.srry can we still be friend.”

The Pretending I Don’t Want To Put It In You, Leila:

“Come sleep with me please just sleeping, nothing else. I need to hold you.”

The English Teacher’s Nightmare:

“U an hidie have fun an sorry for all that dromma i put in your an hidies life plz tell her i said that :)guhh plzz :)”

Not surprisingly, a lot of these mistaken texts are signed “mum”. I’m sure my own mum has accidentally sent stuff to brent@vtext.com on more than one occasion. Leila has a stock “You’ve got the wrong Leila” message she sends back when she has time or if the text seems important, but if the texter is an a-hole (like the guy that dumped Leila above) she’ll usually let them figure it our on their own. You can, and should, read her best-of at her blog The Leila Texts.

Image: Shutterstock/Marcelo Sanchez


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