Yeah, and there's a much different context. Those aren't real children on the show. Those text threads are with adults on both ends. The entire interaction from start to finish is mitigated by professionals.

We're talking about a situation involving a real child, not a sting operation where there isn't an actual victim. There's a real child whose identity would be put at risk of being exposed by releasing the logs.

This isn't primetime TV drama. This is a real situation involving a real minor.

In that show, they’re actively going to visit what they believe to be a child, privately, in person. And discussions leading up to that point often make it clear their intentions of what to do when they get there are sexual.

We don’t know what is in Doc’s comments. He says it was inappropriate and crossed the line, but no images were shared and no attempt to meet privately.

There is a difference, and likely why there was no police involvement. Inappropriate comments aren’t by themselves, illegal. Otherwise half the internet would be in jail.

This, plus just how egregious was it?

No one is wanting to read these messages like they’re 50 Shades of Grey or anything like that. Well, there’s probably somebody but that’s not why most want to see it. Clearly it was not bad enough to get the police involved at the time, so we’re talking less than To Catch A Predator.

Ignoring the age difference for a second, because that part is not relevant to my specific point here… What some people consider flirty, others consider creepy. On a similar note, the same comment coming from a person someone considers attractive and from someone they find ugly often has a completely different reaction.

Doc says that it crossed a line, that’s not under debate by anyone at this point. He says there were no pictures, etc. exchanged, just messages and there was no intent to meet up or anything like that. On the other side one of the original tweets claimed they were sexting. Peoples definitions of sexting can vary dramatically as well.

So clearly the messages went over the line of being inappropriate, no argument there from anyone paying attention, but how far over that line was it? Were they truly explicit messages, or just inappropriate within the context of a 35 year old talking to a minor?

I'm 100% certain that he actually didn't know the kid's age beforehand, that he would have said so in one of his responses. If the situation was anything other than what everybody is already suspecting, he would have put it out there instead of letting the internet speculate wildly. He wouldn't just be sitting on that little nugget of information if it existed. He was too specific in his responses to have left that out unintentionally.