I don't know what's sadder, the fact that someone who is ostensibly an adult tried to get P00P as their license plate, or that I actually found the idea hilarious, even though I am also ostensibly an adult. SGI recently released a list of rejected personalized plates, and I suddenly had a great deal of sympathy for the poor souls who have to work as the arbiters of what goes on neighborhood cars, and what does not.
See, not everything is as obvious as P00P. In fact, the majority of rejected plates had me scratching my head. The potential to offend is not particularly obvious in a lot of them, since they contain weird references or obscure slang. Some seem simply incoherent until you work out the puzzle and realize the intended message. Quickly scrolling through the list, there are some that I am amazed were caught before someone had already bolted the plate to their vehicle. We have people in this province who are paid to sit down, read plates, and figure out if there's something that can be read as offensive, competing with another group who want to see just how rude they can get on the back of their family sedan.
The amount of effort that the people must go through to be able to effectively do their job is staggering, given that they not only have to watch for standard profanity - which shows up a surprising amount - but creative expressions of somewhat rude humor that appear to require the people in question to do actual research into how people are offending each other every day.
Take the plate 1CUP, which is a reference to something gross which I refuse to explain both because this is a family paper, and because I really wouldn't want to put it into words even if it wasn't. However, on its own, it doesn't actually seem that bad. What's wrong with cups, after all? They're a great place to store liquids. However, once you know what the reference is - and if you don't, just trust me, don't research it - the plate becomes really disgusting and was rightfully rejected.
Whoever had the job of reviewing that application has to not only know that reference, but every potentially offensive reference. I'm honestly in awe of some of the stuff they caught, including 1CUP, but also including a ton of plates that confused me on first pass, until I finally got what they were trying to say, and was subsequently grossed out.
Admittedly, some I don't agree with, or at least think that they could be legitimate, family friendly fun in the right context. C0W, for example, would be great if it was meant for a cattle trailer. There are a couple that seem to be sunk by unfortunate coincidence rather than a deliberate effort to offend. There are even more that I don't understand, though I won't post them here just in case I'm not up on the latest slang and it's something that could be aggressively offensive to someone.
That's the thing, I don't think I could ever be quite as adept as sorting out slang as the fine folks who have to deal with these plates on a day to day basis. It can't be easy, since the message could be hidden or even something that is completely out of the ordinary for most people. These fine people have to think like the kind of pranksters who want to put something a bit rude on the back of their vehicles. It can't be an easy job.
