“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: […] like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.” —Jonathan Swift
You resent other people having values you don’t share.
As you sit here saying those who have values you don’t share are participating in something “gross”, under a “sad illusion”, and “letting themselves be tricked” into doing something that’s “morbid”, “tacky at best”, and akin to “embellishing their prison camp number”. lmao okay
So are you a Mercator or a Robinson kind of guy?
If you think the magnitude of information gained is even worth considering for either (or frankly any) party, you’re grossly misunderstanding the scale of the surveillance state or just have really terrible ideas for custom plates. Your plate is inherently already a 100% unique identifier; if you’re worried enough that like six characters of custom text or a chosen design will in any way further government or corporate surveillance, then – and I say this as someone who frequents privacy communities, hates defeatism, and thinks people (myself included) need better privacy hygiene – have fun pissing on a forest fire.
You think it’s snobby to not waste money on a stylized government ID?
If you could read, you’d know I think that it’s fine one way or another and that what’s snobby is your obnoxious attitude toward people who do get one. The difference between you and I is that I see it as a waste of money for me and leave it at that because I don’t pretend to be superior and enlightened when my level of insight that the unwashed masses surely lack is “um, didn’t you know that license plates are tracking IDs?? by the government??? Fucking idiot, Sandra, with your stupid fucking ‘museums are for everyone’ plate with Snoopy on it.”
I don’t see the point in paying extra to have an ID on my car that tells The Man more about me than I think they need to know
Literally what on Earth are you doing to your license plate that tells The Man more about you in a way that realistically matters? You don’t need your Ashley Madison credentials to create a custom plate.
If you’re worried about dragnet surveillance, I guess it’ll help them when they divide the prison camps by baseball team. If you’re worried about automated surveillance like by ALPRs then, uh, pretty sure the model whose literal entire purpose is to create its own features for classification will find abundant other ways to uniquely fingerprint and extract actual, pertinent information about you. And if you’re worried about targeted surveillance by humans scrutinizing you down to what your custom plate says about you, then god help you, and viva México.
I’m just saying a licence plate is intended as a vehicle tracking ID
Everyone here and everyone who gets them knows and understands that.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be registering cars
I didn’t say or even imply you were, and the fact you clarified that anyway is bizarre – because it’d be completely batshit.
letting them trick your brain into pretending that they belong to you and are an extension of your “self” by adding fancy designs is kind of gross.
Brother, my god, it is a fucking identifier plate on your car; no one’s getting “tricked”, and I don’t know if you can believe this, but people can enjoy making objects into extensions of themselves without becoming slaves to The Man – if you can apprehend that someone in Kentucky who pays $25/year or some shit to signal that they’re into amateur radio isn’t offering up their soul in a plate-shaped vessel on the altar of Rebecca Goodman.
Even if you want to bring ALPRs into this, custom plates existed long, long before we had the technology to turn plates into mass-surveillance tools.
This is so goddamn snobby that it’s painful.
What the actual fuck is this comparison? I’m extremely anti-car, and even I’m wondering what has to be wrong with you.
Incidentally got a chuckle out of me that you’re saying this about what’s often effectively a social green-beard (e.g. plates for sports teams, hobbies, causes, etc.).
That cat looks overweight.
Bbbbbbbbbbb wrote: “I like plate customization, its a form of self expression.”
GreenBeard responded to this totally innocuous, non-argumentative statement with: “That’s like embellishing a prison camp number with a fun design. That’s not self-expression that’s morbid.” Then went on to call the practice “gross” and “tacky” and the people who get custom plates under a “sad illusion” and “letting themselves be tricked”.
Again, in response to just an extremely benign and normal statement: “I like plate customization, its a form of self expression.”
Truly I’m the one who likes arguing for the sake of an argument here – not the person who started and perpetuated this abject, comically combative nonsense.