The reservation system of Delta Airlines generated a record locator that read H8GAYS. Somebody actually noticed this and complained, causing the airline to have to apologize. Type H8GAYS into Google and you get 6220 results, all about this one incident. After I publish my post, it will be 6221.
These record locators are completely random strings. I could come up with many insulting combinations without trying very hard, like BADDOG, GR8DIC, FUCYOU, ASSHOL, YU4SEX, SEX4ME, 2HT4ME. Have you ever played Boggle? I could go on all day.
Now airline reservation systems have to keep a blacklist of codes that humans can maintain that are “objectionable,” so the reservation system can reassign another code if it hits one. The problem is, the human brain is exceptionally good with pattern recognition and it will continue to find solutions that are not in the blacklist.
This is analogous to the system used for vanity license plates. Recently there were some headlines that 8THEIST or ATHEIST were rejected by license plate issuing authorities because they were insulting. Those atheists then sued and won. What is a philosophical statement to one may be an insult to others, so who is the judge?
What about 4NICK8, IH82BU?
Virginia recently issued the vanity plate 370H55V. what could wrong with that? Flip it upside down and see. Or this one below?
V55H073
You need to hold a mirror below it to get a sense of the meaning.
In 2009 alone, the state denied more than 700 plate requests including IHAV2P and IAMHIGH along with 100 requests beginning with the letter “F” and myriad proposals involving the number “69,” according to state documents. — from NBC News.
So far we have not included any foreign languages. There are hundreds of languages in the world. I have studied a number of them, and I could come up with tons of very offensive vanity plates that the agent in Virginia who is in charge of censoring would never detect. I even recall having seen some hilarious U.S. vanity plates using the German language – but I am sorry to say I didn’t commit them to memory so I can’t illustrate them here.
I concur that we really do need to keep up some censoring of vanity plates for the gross violations, but I admit that it’s like an arms race. We’ll never be able to catch up with human creativity and deviousness. It gets very tricky when subjective interpretation of what is acceptable comes into play. My subjective standards indicate that while H8GAYS is certainly and unequivocally objectionable, ATHEIST is not.
However, we went too far when we came after computer generated random numbers represented in airline record locators. People are making conscious statements with their vanity plates. Computers are not trying to insult us with random numbers.
SOTHERE