Make Your Embarrassing Drunk Texts Disappear

We all know the feeling: you catch a hideously embarrassing typo in a text to your crush right after you press the send button, or you wake up after a night out to a series of increasingly confused and irritated responses from your ex because it seemed like a good idea to message them at 4 a.m. at the time. If this sounds familiar, I have joyous news. Your days of regretting the moment you sent your first text message may be numbered, because the new Wiper app lets you delete texts after you've sent them. I haven't been this excited about an app since Tag a Cat.So how does it work? According to the Wiper website, "patent-pending technology [wipes] all sides of a conversation — your phone and your friend's, as well as any temporary record kept on Wiper's servers." Unfortunately, you can only wipe texts sent within the app itself; you can't miraculously delete the iMessage complaining about your roommate's boyfriend... that you accidentally sent to your roommate. Mashable kindly tried it for us, and while apparently the app could be easier to use, it does exactly what it set out to do. You can delete your messages after you send them, from both your phone and the one you sent it to. It even comes complete with a little eraser animation! Thanks for taking the time to think about the cute factor, Wiper.

Fantastic as it sounds, there are a few things I can see being problematic if you're as neurotic as I am. For one thing, people can screenshot your conversations, which kind of defeats the purpose of deleting the messages. However, like Snapchat, Wiper lets you know when that happens, so you can hunt the person down and destroy the evidence if need be. And once you delete a message, the app shows that you did it. If you're trying to avoid embarrassing yourself in front of your ex, this probably isn't the best route because they can still see that you sent something, thereby ruining your image of a perfect ice queen who hasn't thought about them in months. No really, months.Also, it has read receipts.

Everyone hates those. So much pressure to reply within a reasonable amount of time!

But these are all pretty minor, even if you are as neurotic as me. As a committed hermit, I'm not normally a fan of messaging apps (do I really need to give people more ways to contact me?), but the option to take back text messages is too perfect to ignore. Now if they could just figure out how to apply that to real-life, maybe I (and my fellow socially awkward penguins) could have a conversation with a minimum level of awkward. By the way, if you don't understand why someone would need this in their life, please write a book describing how you managed to avoid the mess of shame and awkwardness that is most people's young adulthood. I can't be the only person who would read the hell out of that.Images: Giphy (2)