It always amazes me when I have the chance to pick the minds of influential individuals…their humility and humbleness seems to overpower the celebrity that their passions have awarded them. None more so than with Lauren Leto, influential creator and promulgator of all things texted last night. I personally rank Ms. Leto with influential women in entertainment like Carol Burnett, Betty White or even Sarah Palin. These women are a rare find, (as unique as an honest politician), and Lauren Leto definitely ranks with the best of them.
Lauren Leto is a genuine cultural influence, with effortless charm and refined dry wit that would leave any pedantic lost for words; all wrapped in a twenty-something year old chick, who says, “People are highly unimpressed with me.”
Leto is co-creator and owner of the infamously popular, “Texts from Last Night” website and book, which came to start after Leto finished college when most of her friends moved away to seek employment. Leto, who now lives in New York City, recites what many in and out of their twenties all know too well, “there are no jobs ANYWHERE!”
When Leto was in law school , she approached her friend, Ben, (who was also unemployed at the time) to help her out with a side project she was starting. The side project which now almost none of us can (or really want to), escape from in our daily-humor. Texts from Last Night.
We see the ubiquitous 3-digit area code, followed by a hilarious/raunchy SMS posted on our friend’s Facebook Walls, Twitter Feeds, Blogs, E-mails or forwarded to us via Text. Leto’s side project is an international hit, to which she claims people are still relatively “unimpressed” with her. (I think she was being sarcastic)
To a lesser degree, I’m sure the explosion of TFLN was something similar to the “Facebook Phenomenon.” Whereas Leto admittedly only expected for her “side project” to pay a bar tab or two, her success has brought a new level of wealth to which Leto boasts, [enter sarcasm here] “I am surprised and grateful, everyday that Texts from Last Night now pays my phone bill!”
Of course in our modern world, where a few individuals can sit in someone’s living room and create a multimillion dollar company, Leto and TFLN do have to face some competition. She states that websites like “Fuck My Life” (FML) are competition and also are not competition.
Sites like FML are competition, in the regards that people might put TFLN & FML in the same online-entertainment category and say they are a bigger fan of one over the other.
However, FML may not be competition to Leto, because some TFLN fans have told her FML and other sites do not compare to the unique entertainment TFLN brings.
Personally though, Leto feels TFLN and sites like FML are in fact similar, as she feels most individuals who find TFLN entertaining will more than likely check both sites.
It is usually hard for content creators to pick favorite aspects from their sites when they discuss their own creation, but since Leto only hosts the content provided by others, she had no trouble talking about some of her favorite TFLN texts. Her favorite text she quoted was (from my home city of Atlanta):
(770): I got us kicked out of the bar because the waitress found me in the kitchen trying to make spaghetti
Continually sorting through some of the more raunchy and far-off-color text that come through the TFLN approval process has to be entertaining/a chore at the same time. Leto says that for the website, they choose texts which “strike us as unique and funny without being racist or sexist.” For the TFLN book however, the co-creators chose the funniest texts, including many, many texts that have never been posted on the site.
(So if you’re a TFLN fan, I’d highly recommend getting the book!)
Leto who is very excited about her book because she believes it will continue to make people laugh and says “confessing via text to a friend is our generation’s version of confessing to a priest. It purges the soul.” (However, unlike most of our friend’s, our local corner-Catholic establishments do not forward our confessions to Leto’s inbox…)
Of course, the internet is the playground for all ages, and though the site is predominately populated by the twenty-something, Leto says that plenty of “older people” also enjoy the humor. “It’s relatable humor; everyone who has lived through their twenties can find something to laugh at on TFLN.”
For many like Leto who are in their twenties, and have faced unemployment call this time the, “Quarterlife Crisis.” She admits many of the texts submitted to TFLN do speak to individuals being unable to find a job or not knowing where their life is going, and she says “…so yes, I do believe they sometimes reflect a ‘Quarterlife Crisis.’”
And as far as Leto’s own quarterlife crisis, she admits that she is a “recovering” agoraphobic and she used to wonder if she would be one forever. She said “I was scared I wouldn’t be able to have a normal life. Eventually, I got through the worst of it.”
Once you do some reading about all that is Leto, it is easy to become a fan of her personality (Her personal blog is a smart one to follow–as I have since I interviewed her.) She states she is the middle child in a large Italian family, and her snarky/sarcastic personality comes from having to be able to assert your opinion in order to be counted in that environment.
What may seem contradictory to her very strong personality, she self-proclaims herself as a “nerd.” A nerd, because outside of just taking many advanced placement classes in high school, Leto was able to graduate college in three years.
She worked in the science lab of her high school, instead of having a study hall & she’d gladly pass up a night out in favor of a good book. She has a severe internet addiction, studied Arabic “for fun” in college, loved law school & is a hotaku. (I have no idea what a hotaku is…)
Of course Leto is far from her nerdy “Sailor Moon Days” [pictured left] and now that she is paying for her own health insurance, she says that she is indeed “grown up.” Even though she’s grown up, one would imagine that fun and frivolity now runs Leto’s life since TFLN started. However, there is a very adult and genuine side to this wonderful woman.
Leto does state that in growing up, she noticed something about the majority of the Generation-Y population. She feels one of the main issues with the current set of twenty-somethings is “they hide behind the notion of not yet being a grown up.” She believes this to be a mistake many in their 20′s are making, as they are not fully embracing the fact they can finally grab hold of their dreams & that it is a privilege not to be so young anymore.
When she was asked what her one wish would be to change the world through her actions, Leto said…”Could I wish away racism? Dare I dream.” Her main point to this not so frivolous wish was to better education, because as she stated “…knowledge unlocks prejudice.”
To end, Lauren Leto’s “Good, Ambiguous and Profound Advice”:
Trust yourself
Lauren Leto: Texts From Last Night’s Unsung Heroine