You can’t go anywhere these days without seeing an emoji. They’re in our texts and sexts, tattooed on professional basketball players, and tied up in global issues as heavy as sovereignty. But if you’ve managed to mostly avoid the smileys and other lil’ cartoons, those days might be numbered.
Vermont may soon become the first state in the U.S. to allow emojis on license plates. According to CNET, Rep. Rebecca White introduced legislation to the Vermont House of Representatives that would allow drivers to either add an emoji to an assigned license-plate number or as part of a personalized vanity plate.
Does this mean you’ll soon see kitted out Ford Rangers hopping curbs with skulls and old woody PT Cruisers with tongue-out emojis? Not quite. According to the bill’s text, which you can read in short form, it “proposes to create a new 9 special registration plate with the choice of one of six emojis.”
It’s not clear which six emojis would be available, or if that question has even been considered yet. (Maybe they’ll do a public poll, in which case we can already guess which ones would be chosen: eggplant, peach, sweat droplets … ).
However, there is precedent here. As of last year, Queensland, Australia now offers emojis as an option on their license plates. They’re not the exact Apple emojis most people associate with the ideograms, but they’re close. There are five available at the moment: laugh out loud, wink, sunglasses, heart eyes and the classic smile.
If that’s any indication, Vermont will also likely only offer little yellow emoticons rather than random objects which, when introduced into a vanity plate, could make the job of checking for lewd and inappropriate plates a nightmare. But that’s all speculation until the legislation moves forward in the state government. I mean, until the 📝➡️🏢.
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