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Declining Literacy Prompts Honda to Introduce Emoji License Plates

Honda, the number one brand for parents willing to buy a rusty old Civic for their sweet-sixteeners, comes to the rescue of all mankind by introducing emoji license plates. If you’re older than your teenage kid, you wouldn’t understand. Therefore, what the hell is an emoji?
Emoji license plate 1 photo
Photo: Honda
The emoji is what youngsters use to describe the graphic symbols and smileys they send you via text, e-mail, Instagram, Twitter, Viber, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. The following is probably the easiest to understand message containing an emoji: “I <3 U 2, MUM! BTW, CWLD U GIV ME SUM $$$?”

Japanese teenagers started using emojis in the ‘90s because it was cheaper and easier to text this way rather than writing entire words on those hideous brick-shaped phones without touchscreen displays. Furthermore, cell phone plans were hideously expensive back then, so that’s that. These days, though, teenagers use emojis in messages for entirely different reasons from the ones presented above.

Emojis are now the primary method of expressing an emotion or idea in messages. Even though we are progressing as a species, it has come to this because literacy rates are dropping, especially after elementary school. Teenagers don’t know to make the difference between your and you’re, for crying out loud! On the upside, emojis are beneficial to teens who have grown overly large and muscular opposable thumbs.

Specialist medical practitioners are adamant that intensive repetitive use of the upper extremities can lead to musculoskeletal disorders. Such conditions lead to temporary or permanent damage to the thumbs. The importance of the thumb isn't a laughing matter.

If it weren’t for thumbs, we’d have to call the boss every time we’re late for work, call granny and shout into the phone because she has hearing problems since Gerald Ford was President, and the list goes on and on.

What Honda has done with the emoji license plate, then, is make life easier for humankind, except for the highway patrol. Could you imagine a police officer radioing in, “I’m in hot pursuit of a red Civic with the plates reading road, car, sun, traffic lights, key, and what the hell is that? Maybe two Japanese flags?” Then again, I have this feeling speed cameras have a software that can decrypt emojis faster than an officer can by eye.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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