Free speech is an important right, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as part of the First Amendment. Having said that, I’m not sure that using your free speech to send horny DMs to congresspeople is what the Founding Fathers had in mind, not least because all you’re really doing is traumatizing some poor interns.



C.J Petersen, who does comms for Iowa’s state auditor, tweeted this week, “When you send thirsty DMs to your favorite politician, just remember that a communications staffer is the one who sees it first and we are judging you ,” which prompted other former interns to share as much as their NDAs will allow.



One tweeted, “I will never not bring up the fact that I was the brave soul in charge of responding to Jon Ossoff’s Instagram DMs.” Ossoff, a former investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, was elected to the Senate to represent Georgia in early 2021. He has almost half a million followers on Instagram, and his comments sections are full of people calling him handsome and posting fire emojis, so we can only imagine what his DMs are like.


Another user, who currently works for Senator Raphael Warnock, tweeted, “running social media for a female politician’s account is...wild and that’s all i’ll say.”



Someone who once worked for the late civil rights activist Representative John Lewis tweeted, “I feel this. It was John Lewis’s DMs. When he was in his 70s. Honestly it helped me feel good about what it’s like to get older,” which is kind of wholesome, at least in comparison to the other examples — I guess?


Other people had questions, primarily wondering who would be down bad enough to send thirsty DMs to politicians, while others implored such people to pull themselves together. After all, country before hoes.