***Warning: due to the nature of this story, the occasional use of “big people words” is sprinkled throughout.***

It appears that someone at the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles has suddenly become all internet savvy. Or, conversely, they’ve gone completely batsh*t insane. Really, it could be either one.

The story is this: many license plates in the state of North Carolina contain the letters WTF. Like all license plates, the letter and number combinations are randomly assigned by the DMV, and no one has any control of the letter-number combination they receive. Thus people can be driving down the street with plates that read WTF-123 (or some similar combination) on their cars. In fact, there are 10,000 plates in the state that contain the WTF combination.

Please, avert your eyes immediately! This license plate has been deemed offensive by the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles!

Apparently, someone at the NC DMV has suddenly become aware that WTF stands for “What the F*ck” in leet speak, commonly used amongst gamers. And the state of North Carolina, concerned that this some drivers may be offended by this, has decided that any license plate containing that 3-letter combination can be replaced, for free.

Yes, really.

There’s a bit of a process – you have to find the term offensive, and you have to apply with the DMV to get your plates replaced. The NC DMV hasn’t issued any comment on what brought about this newfound “awareness” of a term that been used since the dawn of the internet, or how much this will cost taxpayers, or who thought of this brilliant plate-replacing idea. They don’t even seem to be indicating that anyone has been actually complaining about this.

There was, at the time of this story, no confirmation that the NC DMV would also be replacing other, equally offensive license plates. We contacted the NC DMV, suggesting they replace all license plates containing 1) the letters XXX, because that might refer, in the minds of some drivers, to adult films, 2) the letters XYZ, because of the adolescent joke “eXamine Your Zipper”, 3) the number 69, because it might refer to a sex act, 4) any combination of letters that includes BS, because it may refer to the excrement of cattle, or 5) the numbers 666, because it might draw the attention of Satan to a driver’s vehicle unnecessarily.

[Source]

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