WTF is on that license plate?
If you don’t know what that stands for, pull aside an unabashed person under the age of 25 and they’ll fill you in.
Or you can ask the commissioner at the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. He’s heard about it all too often recently. See, apparently, WTF is going around a lot in North Carolina these days on, of all places, the state’s license plates .
Apparently, it was the first random letter combination that popped up when North Carolina changed its plate design. Some teenager filled in a grandparent on why they thought the plates were so funny and, boom, it’s suddenly a major catastrophe within the bureaucratic ranks.
But they didn’t go quite far enough when alerting the state’s population on how to get a free replacement plate. You see, when you check out the N.C. DMV’s Web site, you also might find that letter combo as the state’s sample plate. Heck, they even used it as a sample plate for the DMV spokeswoman to carry around when talking about the new plates.
If you’re going to make a public spectacle of something as innocent as a three-letter combination on a license plate, as least have the wherewithal to cleanse your own stock first.
Of course, a better question is why make it an issue in the first place?
So what if someone sees a three-letter acronym used on instant messaging and text messaging programs as potentially offensive? Who says we all have to see the license plate through their distorted view?
Besides that, why open a giant can of worms that is going to lead to banning a lot of letter combinations because other people will find them offensive, or at least offensive enough to try to stir up trouble for the DMV – an agency that is not the favorite of most people in any state.
What about the atheists? They certainly can’t stand to see OMG on any plates.
What about the broken-hearted? They’ll break down crying every time they see ILY pop up on the bumper in front of them.
Certainly those who have just had a rift with a lifelong friend couldn’t bear watching BFF go down the road.
The list here could go on ad infinitum but I think you get my point. Kneejerk reactions by bureaucrats rarely lead to anything good. I say let those things that could be innocent stay innocent. We all need to lighten up and getting to LOL at a funny double-entendre on something as mundane as a license plate might just be the thing we need on the overly tense highways of America.
Tags: Communications, Media