WTF? NC Offers to Replace 10,000 License PlatesComments:467
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jun 26, 2008 07:17 PM from the what-if-I'm-offended-by-prudery? dept.
beadfulthings writes "In light of recent discussions about the Internet habits of the older generation, it's comforting to know that in North Carolina, up to 10,000 license plates containing the potentially offensive 3-letter WTF combination will be replaced by the Motor Vehicles division at no cost — if the owner of the vehicle finds the plates offensive. As reported on Winston-Salem's television station WXII, the MVD was alerted to the problem by an irate 60-year-old technology teacher who'd been clued in by her grandchildren. The article includes a helpful slide show of twenty Internet acronyms every parent should know. The article doesn't include any information on how you could actually apply for a WTF license plate."
1. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot 2. Wednesday Thursday Friday 3. Wow Text File 4. Write To File 5. Welcome To France (lolcats) 6. We The French 7. Work Time Fun
10. Wussies! The French.
11. What Text File?
12. Wild Tattoo Fun
13. Why The Face?
14. Why The Frown?
15. What The Fork()
16. Washing The Ford
17. Waving To Fergie
18. Wanting That Female
19. Willing To Fornicate
Internet jargon? A friend got in a little trouble for writing "WTF?" on a student's essay back in '84. He explained that it stood for "What's this for?" But the acronym probably dates back at least to WW2.
Which leads to the question, why are bad words so damn bad? I never understood how adults can look down on children crying because they got called a doodoo head, only to throw an unquestioned punch at whoever tells them 'fuck you'. What's the best way to stop this childishness? Quit beating you kids when they curse. I think strict child abuse laws is the reason why swearing is becoming more acceptable. In the mean time we have to deal with anyone that went through this to hold a greater grudge against a politician that swears as opposed to a politician that is blatantly corrupt. Try saying fuck on a campaign trail and see how well that goes. That kind of childishness pisses me off.
"I never understood how adults can look down on children crying because they got called a doodoo head, only to throw an unquestioned punch at whoever tells them 'fuck you'. What's the best way to stop this childishness? Quit beating you kids when they curse. I think strict child abuse laws is the reason why swearing is becoming more acceptable. In the mean time we have to deal with anyone that went through this to hold a greater grudge against a politician that swears as opposed to a politician that is blatantly corrupt. Try saying fuck on a campaign trail and see how well that goes."
Sounds like we need the 7 words you can't say on TV even more than ever.....RIP George Carlin
That is one of the things I love in Kurt Vonnegut's The Big Space Fuck [pierretristam.com]:
...so even the President was saying shit and fuck and so on, without anybody's feeling threatened or taking offense. It was perfectly OK. He called the Space Fuck a Space Fuck and so did everybody else...
On the other hand Bush has been making inroads [typepad.com] in that direction...
What I'd like to know is how you can be offended by a random three letters, even if they happen to have relatively recently gained a meaning. The key here word is random. They are not offensive unless one chooses to make them so. IMHO, folks should stop being so thin skinned.
My license place has DRM on it, which offends me almost as much as the real stuff. Thankfully it's sitting in my garage where my house number is 404, so no one sees it anyway.
They are offering to exchange them to any owner who is offended, they aren't recalling them.
In the big scheme of things, I think this will be like hot coffee... where only a tiny tiny fraction ever come forward and get an exchange.
Lots of 3 letter combos aren't issued, wtf got added to the list, and anyone who currently has it can have it exchanged without having to pay the usual fees for new plates.
Actually, from reading the article, this sounds like it might be a standard practice: If you have an issue with the randomly-assigned number you are given you can take it in and get a new one. The specific letters are just what brought the issue to this newspaper's attention.
Living in North Carolina, I can only hope only a handful of people will turn in their plates.
But the real story should be the clueless educator. Hell, I'm not to far off from 60 and knew about WTF. Here is the funny/sad part--part of the North Carolina curriculum from the NC Dept of Public Instruction is to teach emoticons and abreviations in computer class. I was floored when I saw it being taught in the classroom. The LOL part came when I saw the test the kids are given on the subject matter...
They do this because they know it's the only way they can communicate with the rest of the world. What else are you supposed to do when stringing more than 3 letters together is a challenge?
... part of the North Carolina curriculum from the NC Dept of Public Instruction is to teach emoticons and abreviations in computer class.
Wow, is that what a technology teacher does? I'm working too hard...I should quit all this math/computer science book larnin' and go be a technology teacher back home in NC...
.....than being afraid of words is being afraid of acronyms that might stand for those words.
Really, someone needs to.....
(1).....take every possible three-letter combination
(2) Come up with a suggested offensive, blasphemous, or obscene connotation for each one.
(3) Circulate said list widely, especially on North Carolina related sites and boards (maybe e-mail to everyone in the N.C. DMV).
(4) Stand back and watch the fun as they are forced to recall every last fuckin' license plate and replace it with numbers-only plates.
I used to have WTFLOL in NY... but apparently someone took the time to actually complain to the DMV about it so the NY DMV sent me a new set of plates with a letter explaining the situation.
It was a sad day. Sad that someone would actually take that kind of time to complain about a license plate.
So now I have SRSLY b/c it is srsly retarded that I had to turn in the old plates.
My favorite is still the guy that managed to get "GOT MILF" on his license plate. Even better is the picture of the florida plate "A55 RGY", which doesn't seem bad until you see it - the florida orange in the middle of the plate looks like a big O.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday June 26 2008, @07:44PM (#23960513)
The article includes a helpful slide show of twenty Internet acronyms every parent should know.
This is the funniest list since Microsoft did one a few years back (I can't' find the link any more)
From this helpful list...
POS-- Parents over shoulder? Not piece of shit or point of sale- and not to be confused with the other MENACING parents-are-here including Parents-in-room (PIR), Parent alert (p911), Parents-are-watching (PAW), Parents-are-listening (PAL), "keeping-parents-clueless" (KPC), and my favorite NIFOC (nude in front of computer), which of course you'd want to keep abbreviated when other people are in the room so they won''t find out (?HUH?) Then there's the ultimately chilling NALOP (Not a lot of people know this)...
WTF? After what I'm guessing is probably an equal amount of research, I've discovered up some for their next edition of the list. Frightening to think our children use these.
ISDOOMPH (I'm Selling Drugs Out Of My Parents House), IWKMYITST (I Will Kill My Parents In Their Sleep Tonight), UHWMD? (Do You Have Weapons of Mass Destruction?), ITGPAHAAWBC (I Think Getting Pregnant And Having An Abortion Would Be Cool), IHGDY? (I Hate God Do You?), LPG (Lets Poison Grandma), ROFML (Rolling On Floor Mainlining), RBIF (Robbing Banks is Fun), LSGTAWS (Lets Sniff Glue Tonight And Worship Satan), MPWNFTAO (My Parents Will NEVER Figure This Acronym Out), and GG (Golly Gee).
Along the same lines... I was raised in Ohio and lived on State Route 69.
When i got home from the military in the 60's the route had been changed to State Route 235.
Mom said it was changed because the college students were stealing all of the road signs along the highway but she did not know why they would be doing that.
When I bought my new car last year I got one and was quite pleased. I was planning on getting a vanity plate but when I got the plate in the mail I was like, WTF who needs one now?:)
What about the time I went with my gay friend to the gay bar to show I was cool and not prejudiced against homos and made the mistake of wearing my AC/DC t-shirt. Acronym malfunction doesn't even begin to describe it.
With the passing of George Carlin, I am reminded that there are at least 7 very offensive words [wikipedia.org].
So, any license plate that has one or more of these letters is suspect; S, P, F, C, M, or T. (C appears twice in the list, so any license plate that has two Cs in it is especially bad.)
Bureaucrats who worry about this kind of shit are as worthless as tits on a boar. Those cocksucking motherfuckers really piss me off. What a bunch of cunts. Fuck them.
WTF? Still can't turn off
this section in preferen
ces. (And the greasemo
nkey scripts I was reco
mmended don't work so
well...)
Someone over at Slashd
ot really needs to take a
serious look at why the
comment field is so stup
id narrow. Why, it's almo
st almost unusably narr
ow. I mean, how difficult
would it be to set the fiel
d to a usable width? Ju
st multiply the width by a
bout a factor of five or si
x. Or better yet, use a
percentage, like say nin
ety percent or somethin
g in that neighbourhood.
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are going to use taxpayer dollars for this? If I lived in NC *I* would be the one shouting 'WTF?' for real!
Way To Fail (Score:3, Funny)
Here are a lot of non-offensive explanations:
1. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
2. Wednesday Thursday Friday
3. Wow Text File
4. Write To File
5. Welcome To France (lolcats)
6. We The French
7. Work Time Fun
More unique stuff here [thefreedictionary.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
8. Whip The French
8. We Thump French
10. Wussies! The French.
11. What Text File?
12. Wild Tattoo Fun
13. Why The Face?
14. Why The Frown?
15. What The Fork()
16. Washing The Ford
17. Waving To Fergie
18. Wanting That Female
19. Willing To Fornicate
Re:Way To Fail (Score:5, Funny)
Is that what they call it these days?
Re:Way To Fail (Score:4, Funny)
Waxing the Frigate?
I think I just sunk my own battleship :(
Re:Way To Fail (Score:4, Informative)
You are aware that the French are partially responsible for the American Revolutionary War victory George Washington scored over the British, right?
Americans really should learn more history, even their own would help them to navigate the currents of this world's events.
Re:Way To Fail (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Way To Fail (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Way To Fail (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet jargon? A friend got in a little trouble for writing "WTF?" on a student's essay back in '84. He explained that it stood for "What's this for?" But the acronym probably dates back at least to WW2.
Re:Way To Fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Which leads to the question, why are bad words so damn bad? I never understood how adults can look down on children crying because they got called a doodoo head, only to throw an unquestioned punch at whoever tells them 'fuck you'. What's the best way to stop this childishness? Quit beating you kids when they curse. I think strict child abuse laws is the reason why swearing is becoming more acceptable. In the mean time we have to deal with anyone that went through this to hold a greater grudge against a politician that swears as opposed to a politician that is blatantly corrupt. Try saying fuck on a campaign trail and see how well that goes. That kind of childishness pisses me off.
Re:Way To Fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like we need the 7 words you can't say on TV even more than ever.....RIP George Carlin
Re:Way To Fail (Score:4, Interesting)
That is one of the things I love in Kurt Vonnegut's The Big Space Fuck [pierretristam.com]:
...so even the President was saying shit and fuck and so on, without anybody's feeling threatened or taking offense. It was perfectly OK. He called the Space Fuck a Space Fuck and so did everybody else...
On the other hand Bush has been making inroads [typepad.com] in that direction...
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, sometimes random number plates can be pretty unambiguous
http://www.manbottle.com/picture_library/ass_orgy_license_plate [manbottle.com]
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
My license place has DRM on it, which offends me almost as much as the real stuff. Thankfully it's sitting in my garage where my house number is 404, so no one sees it anyway.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are offering to exchange them to any owner who is offended, they aren't recalling them.
In the big scheme of things, I think this will be like hot coffee... where only a tiny tiny fraction ever come forward and get an exchange.
Lots of 3 letter combos aren't issued, wtf got added to the list, and anyone who currently has it can have it exchanged without having to pay the usual fees for new plates.
This is a non-issue.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In New York there are plates that start with BBW it doesn't mean driving the car is a Fat Chick.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, from reading the article, this sounds like it might be a standard practice: If you have an issue with the randomly-assigned number you are given you can take it in and get a new one. The specific letters are just what brought the issue to this newspaper's attention.
So, in other words, this is non-news.
Yes, but where will they sell them? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes, but where will they sell them? (Score:5, Funny)
The real story is the clueless teacher (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real story is the clueless teacher (Score:5, Funny)
They do this because they know it's the only way they can communicate with the rest of the world.
What else are you supposed to do when stringing more than 3 letters together is a challenge?
Re:The real story is the clueless teacher (Score:4, Funny)
POS (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't tell anyone it actually means "Piece of Shit." NC is running out of possible 3 letter combinations!
Good combinations (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good combinations (Score:5, Funny)
The sad part? (Score:3, Funny)
He's a technology teacher and he doesn't know what "WTF" stands for. Just what technology is he actually teaching about?
WTF Joining a Long List (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing more stupid..... (Score:5, Interesting)
.....than being afraid of words is being afraid of acronyms that might stand for those words.
Really, someone needs to.....
(1).....take every possible three-letter combination
(2) Come up with a suggested offensive, blasphemous, or obscene connotation for each one.
(3) Circulate said list widely, especially on North Carolina related sites and boards (maybe e-mail to everyone in the N.C. DMV).
(4) Stand back and watch the fun as they are forced to recall every last fuckin' license plate and replace it with numbers-only plates.
Re:The only thing more stupid..... (Score:5, Funny)
Lucky... (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to have WTFLOL in NY... but apparently someone took the time to actually complain to the DMV about it so the NY DMV sent me a new set of plates with a letter explaining the situation.
It was a sad day. Sad that someone would actually take that kind of time to complain about a license plate.
So now I have SRSLY b/c it is srsly retarded that I had to turn in the old plates.
Re:Lucky... (Score:5, Funny)
A few years back, Smoking Gun obtained a ton of DMV complaint letters about vanity plates and put it on their site. Link [thesmokinggun.com]
GOT MILF? (Score:4, Funny)
My favorite is still the guy that managed to get "GOT MILF" on his license plate. Even better is the picture of the florida plate "A55 RGY", which doesn't seem bad until you see it - the florida orange in the middle of the plate looks like a big O.
Carlin (Score:3, Funny)
George Carlin would have been proud!
are you afraid, parents? (Score:5, Funny)
The article includes a helpful slide show of twenty Internet acronyms every parent should know.
This is the funniest list since Microsoft did one a few years back (I can't' find the link any more)
From this helpful list...
POS-- Parents over shoulder? Not piece of shit or point of sale- and not to be confused with the other MENACING parents-are-here including Parents-in-room (PIR), Parent alert (p911), Parents-are-watching (PAW), Parents-are-listening (PAL), "keeping-parents-clueless" (KPC), and my favorite NIFOC (nude in front of computer), which of course you'd want to keep abbreviated when other people are in the room so they won''t find out (?HUH?) Then there's the ultimately chilling NALOP (Not a lot of people know this)...
WTF? After what I'm guessing is probably an equal amount of research, I've discovered up some for their next edition of the list. Frightening to think our children use these.
ISDOOMPH (I'm Selling Drugs Out Of My Parents House), IWKMYITST (I Will Kill My Parents In Their Sleep Tonight), UHWMD? (Do You Have Weapons of Mass Destruction?), ITGPAHAAWBC (I Think Getting Pregnant And Having An Abortion Would Be Cool), IHGDY? (I Hate God Do You?), LPG (Lets Poison Grandma), ROFML (Rolling On Floor Mainlining), RBIF (Robbing Banks is Fun), LSGTAWS (Lets Sniff Glue Tonight And Worship Satan), MPWNFTAO (My Parents Will NEVER Figure This Acronym Out), and GG (Golly Gee).
It started with road signs (Score:5, Interesting)
Along the same lines... I was raised in Ohio and lived on State Route 69.
When i got home from the military in the 60's the route had been changed to State Route 235.
Mom said it was changed because the college students were stealing all of the road signs along the highway but she did not know why they would be doing that.
Re:It started with road signs (Score:5, Funny)
OMGWTF7 Plate (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, here in Virginia the state charges for a "WTF" license plate [flickr.com]. Now that's good governance.
I have one of these (Score:3, Interesting)
The list doesn't help (Score:3, Informative)
damn, they think that was bad! (Score:5, Funny)
What about the time I went with my gay friend to the gay bar to show I was cool and not prejudiced against homos and made the mistake of wearing my AC/DC t-shirt. Acronym malfunction doesn't even begin to describe it.
Re:damn, they think that was bad! (Score:5, Informative)
AC/DC is the name of a band (who the GP is apparently a fan of) and also a slang term for bisexual.
So logically... (Score:5, Funny)
So, any license plate that has one or more of these letters is suspect; S, P, F, C, M, or T. (C appears twice in the list, so any license plate that has two Cs in it is especially bad.)
Bureaucrats who worry about this kind of shit are as worthless as tits on a boar. Those cocksucking motherfuckers really piss me off. What a bunch of cunts. Fuck them.
Initialism (Score:4, Informative)
WTF (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, This Feels Weird. To Fund Withdrawal The Feds Will Tax Far Worse. This Furore Will Take Forever!
I had a similar problem (Score:4, Funny)
The Ohio DMV gave me "FA66ET".
While it wasn't spelled correctly, I still got looks from quite a few passersby and fellow motorists.
After I couldn't take it any more, I went down and reported the plates stolen.
Re:Heh (Score:4, Funny)
this section in preferen
ces. (And the greasemo
nkey scripts I was reco
mmended don't work so
well...)
Someone over at Slashd
ot really needs to take a
serious look at why the
comment field is so stup
id narrow. Why, it's almo
st almost unusably narr
ow. I mean, how difficult
would it be to set the fiel
d to a usable width? Ju
st multiply the width by a
bout a factor of five or si
x. Or better yet, use a
percentage, like say nin
ety percent or somethin
g in that neighbourhood.
Sheesh!
Re:Heh (Score:4, Informative)
You guys do know that you can set the width and height of the reply box using that "Options" button beneath it, right?
I've set it to 80x25 once, and that was that...
np: Lyrics Born - Do U Buy It? (Everywhere At Once)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OH SHIT THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG
PARENT OVER SHOULDER!!!
PARENT OVER SHOULDER!!!
(alksjf;klajsldjf alskdjflasjfla sdklfajsldkfj alskdfjklasjdflakdjflkajdflkajdflkadjfalksdjf)
Re:EVERY PARENT SHOULD KNOW! (Score:4, Funny)