The modern rules of sexting: Everyone does it.

Warning: This post is extremely NSFW. So make sure your boss/kid isn’t behind you as you scroll down.

I sent my very first sext at the age of 15. Maybe I was 13. I was up late, talking to strangers in an AOL chatroom, when someone asked me to upload my photo. I can remember hesitating for a few moments, then obliging, my heart galloping along. I arranged myself on the thick carpet in my bedroom, took a photo with my Web cam, and sent it. Why? Why not? I was clothed, but it was definitely meant to be provocative, flirtatious. I couldn’t fathom any repercussions to my behavior, not at that moment, not at that age. And nothing bad happened, not really. People made comments of the variety you’d expect, some nice, some not so nice, and then the conversation trotted along.

Last weekend, my baby niece — who is now 17 — told me that at her high school, trading sexy photos is as common as trading Instagram handles. She doesn’t participate in the exchanges, she says, because these days, everything is forever. She lives in a different era. My photo mostly went away, but hers wouldn’t evaporate so easily.

I’ve long been interested in how technology mediates desire and the way that our phones, an extension of ourselves, foster intimate interactions that feel so personal and deep, despite being relayed through a machine. Oceans of emotion can be transmitted through a text message, an emoji sequence, and a winking semicolon, but humans are hardwired to respond to visuals.

This project came to life after the celebrity hacks of 2014 and the condescending aftermath of advice toward women that lectured them — us — about taking photos of our bodies, nude or even scantily clad in bikinis or in a dressing room. We were told that we only had ourselves to blame for expressing sexuality through our devices, and that we couldn’t expect the companies that sell us these machines and services to protect us if we behaved in a way deemed inappropriate. People weren’t (yet) telling these companies that they needed to work on their security protocols, so that the people using their devices and services would feel safe, or even that our safety was important. It enraged me. It still does.

I think that everybody sexts. Not everyone sends nude photos, of course, for a variety of reasons. But many people I’ve talked to define a sext as anything sent with sexual intent, be it a suggestive Gchat exchange, a racy photo, a suggestive Snapchat, or even those aqua-blue droplets of sweat emoji.

I asked people I knew — and many I didn’t — to talk to me about sexts and the stories behind them, the risks, perceived and real, and why they did it, knowing that they could be shared beyond their control. Lastly, I asked them to share a nude that they had sent to someone. And so many people did, without hesitation, or requiring anything in exchange. I was floored by their openness, and the expanse of human emotions and experiences on display. What I discovered, mainly, is that sexting — like anything else done on our phones — was mostly just meant to be fun, for fun, grown folks doing what grown folks do. That is what I’m hoping to convey to you through all of this. I hope this project lives beyond this version, and I hope to continue to collect images, and stories, which can be sent to everybodysexts@gmail.com.

This is an exploration of what it means to be a human being in the 21st century.

This is, Everybody Sexts.

Here is a gallery of the artist’s impressions of the “Sexts” discussed below. Warning: very NSFW (Post continues after gallery)…

Everybody sexts

Everybody sexts

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Everybody sexts

Adam, 34 Small business owner, Los Angeles

My friend Christopher, a photographer from PinUps magazine, took this pretty nude of me. I sent it to my current boyfriend as a naughty treat. He loved it. Of course. I sent my first nude years and years ago. It was probably a shot of my butt. I used to send them all the time, when I was single. Nudes are like baseball trading cards for the gays.

M Brand marketer, New York

Q: How often do you send nude sexts? A: I don’t actually send [sexts] often, especially considering all the celeb leaks of late. I’ve always been a bit reticent to send out nude pics that prominently feature any identifying characteristics, like my damn face.

Q: What’s the story with this sext? A: [The guy I’m dating] asked for a “tit flick” to get him through nervous jitters surrounding a work presentation he had to make. A complete spur-of-the-moment request — and fulfillment of said request.

Q: Who makes the cut? A: I’ve only sent nudies to guys I’m seriously dating, or boyfriends. Again, it’s the management of digital footprint thingy at play here. I try my best to protect myself out there in the innanetz.

Q: How do you know you can trust the recipient? A: There’s a tacit agreement between lovers that what you share together as a couple is meant to and should be sacred, not to be violated or find its way outside the established circle of trust. Right?

Alan Dickson, 31 Film/TV Art Assistant, Everywhere/nowhere

This is me smiling for the camera in a bathtub in my parents’ house. I sent it last winter when I was in California around Christmas. I sent it to people who were probably 3,000 miles away in New York, because I rarely have sexual encounters with people on the West Coast. I sent it to… people whom I had just worked with and people whom I may have had sex with or whom I was possibly going to in the future? Not having much sexual release makes you take photos and send them to people, right?

I can’t believe I have been sending nudes for 13 years. Before telephones had cameras. I am going to remember that if some punk kid ever says something to me about my age or something. “Kid, I have been sending nudes before you were born.” At first it was a little nerve-racking. It was later, when the sex tape things started happening that I really came to realize that it might not be the end of the world if they leaked out a little. I try and send photos which are of good quality and not just like, “Here is a crappy picture of my dick,” so that if people see them they might be like oh that is nice or something to that effect.

Number of nudes sent to date: Probably ~1,000

Editor, 27

I sent this in … January, I think? To a guy I’ve been sleeping with on and off (mostly off) for a while. We don’t hang out as friends, but so often — every couple of months, I would say — we text each other (usually he gets in touch with me) and after some back and forth, some hemming and hawing (mostly on my part), we meet somewhere and have sex. I sent this because it had been a while since we’d slept together, and I wanted to see him — or at least I wanted him to want to see me — and I knew that this was exactly the kind of thing he would like. His exact response was “Oh fuck.” I told him I’d taken the picture right before making myself come (true), and he texted back that he made himself come while looking at it (unverifiable). Later he elaborated that he’d been with people when he got it, and had to excuse himself and go