Vanity plates are something that people either love or hate. People spend a lot of money for their license plates to get a point across, usually in an effort to be funny or endearing or even offensive. There are plenty of effects people could wish to elicit from having a vanity plate, but the reason anyone gets one is the same: it plays to their vanity and pride.

Not all vanity plates are created equal, however. Some are funnier than others. Some are downright dirty, and many offensive ones get complaints, begging the question: are vanity plates worth it? Typically speaking, no. But for the purposes of this article, the answer is a resounding yes. It gives us a glimpse of humanity that we’d rather forget existed: pretentious people with little regard for the feelings and opinions of others.

A lot of custom license plates are designed around the fact that the driver knows they’ll anger other people on the road. These usually belong to fast drivers who like to cut people off in traffic, and when they swoop in front of you, BAM, you’re forced to shake your fist a second time at their ridiculous vanity plate.

Other times, license plates and bumper stickers are very telling of a person’s opinions, beliefs, and how they act. Lots of people cover their cars in bumper stickers with political ideologies and half-hatched conspiracies. It’s a good way to advertise what you’re like as a person, because these people know that it’s difficult to censor someone who’s driving on the road. It’s one of the last remaining ways to get your opinion across without allowing a retort or rebuttal.

Here are 23 embarrassing license plates and 5 embarrassing bumper stickers.

28 N DEBT

There are many variations of this license plate floating around, often with other spellings (IN DEBT, or HI DEBT), but usually with one thing in common: they’re always showcased on expensive cars, like the Lamborghini shown here, or a Ferrari, Mercedes, or another luxury vehicle. It is a pretty funny, self-deprecating license plate, because it shows the driver’s honesty that they spent more than their means, but it also elicits a bit of a forehead slap. Some things are better left unsaid.

27 GOES 2 11

This license plate plays on the classic comedy spoof from This is Spinal Tap, and the concept that these amps “go to 11,” referring to their loudness (whereas usually, 10 is the highest). However, Johnny Dixon, a man who complained to the Washington Department of Licensing, clearly didn’t get the joke. In fact, he missed it so badly that he believed the license was in reference referred to the length of something and thought it was in poor taste that WA would issue a plate so crude.

26 mETALLICa

This one’s a bit embarrassing, because it’s also quite a common license plate around the country. On one hand, the license plate does a good job of showing where your musical allegiances lie, on the other hand, it looks completely tacky. The band name of the heavy metal legends is, unfortunately, nine letters long, where license plates only run to seven numbers or letters. So, people have taken it upon themselves to make the license plate say “ETALLIC,” and then paste or draw on their own bookends, “M” and “A,” to complete the band name.

25 I LV TOFU

Here’s another controversial license plate that could easily be misconstrued and misread, mainly because the designers of the plate probably didn’t realize this simple fact: if you have seven letters/numbers filled on your license plate, there are no rooms for spaces. So, even though this license plate is supposed to say “I love tofu,” it could easily be misread to say something much worse. For that reason, the Tennessee Department of Revenue rejected this vanity plate.

24 VLAD THE

Here’s another clever one that history buffs will enjoy, and it’s been spotted on California, Virginia, and Pennsylvania plates (the latter maybe being the most apropos because it reads closest to Transylvania). The way this plate reads is pretty easy to understand: you write VLAD THE on the plate, and under it, it’s supposed to read Impala, as in the Chevy Impala. When combined, it reads “Vlad the Impala,” a moniker for Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Dracula, the 15th-century Wallachian lord and inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

23 I AM POOR

This vanity plate is pretty straight to the point, and it kind of goes along the same lines as the “IN DEBT” license plates mentioned earlier, but in the opposite way. This bad plate reads “I AM POOR,” and is usually attached to something like the car shown here, an old Ford that probably didn’t cost the driver too much. Now, do you really want to broadcast that to the world? I mean, just because you own an inexpensive car doesn’t necessarily mean you’re poor, unless you tell everyone you are. Many celebrities own cars like this one.

22 LMAO AT U

This is an irksome custom license plate that truly puts the “vanity” in vanity plate. Clearly, the person who put this plate on their car means for you to see it once they cut you off in traffic or something similar, and when you’re fuming the most, you’ll read this and get even angrier. It’s a petty license plate for a petty person, and the owner of this plate is probably a terrible human, with no regard for other people. Harsh, maybe. But probably true. If you don’t know what “LMAO” means, look it up.

21 EPICFAI

This is both a funny and embarrassing license plate. It’s funny because it looks hilarious, and it is clearly representing the exact thing it’s supposed to be representing. It’s a double entendre of sorts, if that’s the correct phrase. This person got a license plate that reads “EPICFAI,” but ran out of space, so they tacked on an “L,” to finish the thought, thus making the license plate, truly, an epic fail. It’s both embarrassing and endearing, and we love it.

20 INVZIBL

Here’s another funny one, from a person who probably just likes to make people laugh. The person here has a Jeep in a camouflage paint job. Maybe they’re military, maybe not. Either way, their license plate reads “INVZIBL,” which is clearly meant to read “invisible.” It’s saying that, because the Jeep is camouflaged, it’s therefore invisible. I’m sorry if that needed to be spelled out for you. And while the Jeep clearly isn’t invisible, it will still probably give people driving behind it a chuckle.

19 MUAHAHA

Imagine the evildoer possessing this license plate when they cut you off. It’s one of those plates that, at first, you might get a bit ticked off from, but shortly after you’d probably laugh. This is a more playful version of the “LMAOATU” plate, but made much more tastefully. Instead of raising the blood pressure of a driver after they cut you off (like with LMAOATU), if you read “MUAHAHA” right after that happened, you’d probably forgive the driver pretty quickly. It’s hard not to sound out the evil laugh in your head whenever you read it!

18 NOT POOR

There are lots of people out there who believe they’re much cleverer than they really are. Pretty much anyone who puts “not poor,” “in debt,” “hi debt,” “I’m poor,” or any variation of that clearly doesn’t have much creativity, and they probably are ripping off some other plate they’ve seen in the past. This is one of those license plates that, when you read—especially when it’s attached to a Porsche or BMW or something similar—you immediately scoff and roll your eyes. Don’t associate with these people—their ego is clearly out of this world.

17 EAT THE

This is a pretty funny, if not morbid, license plate, and if you’re a driver who gets easily offended—like is so common these days—this will probably royally tick you off. You might just have to make a complaint to the DMV. If the words “EAT THE” were plastered on any other license plate, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But the driver here had the foresight to plan out their vanity plate, knowing they’d get the hearty handprints and “kids first” sign underneath. What begins as a playful license plate frame becomes very apocalyptic and zombie-esque quite quickly!

16 I AM LATE

“I AM LATE.” Another license plate belonging to the awful people of the world—and usually belonging on the back of a Lamborghini or Ferrari or other fast car. The people with license plates like these clearly believe they’re better than you, more important than you, and when they cut you off in traffic, they want you to know how little they regard you. An “I AM LATE” license plate reads as a manual for the terrible people of the world.

15 BY BY GAS

Tesla owners are a breed of their own. They belong to an exclusive club that not many others belong to (although before long, we all might!), and they want everyone to know about it. That’s why it’s very common to see Tesla license plates that read something along the lines of “LOL GAS,” or “ROFL OIL,” or a combination, or the misspelling here "BYBYGAS,” to let you know that they’re very happy they don’t have to use gas, unlike us mere mortals. It’s another move by morally bankrupt people, and gives all Tesla owners a bad name.

14 R U 18 YET

This is a pretty disturbing one that borders on the line of controversial and “what in the world was the DMV thinking allowing this?” There are no two ways to read this: it’s clearly a dirty call from a very gutter-brained person, and it’s a great way to get beat up if you run across the wrong person that doesn’t take lightly to your jests. In fact, this license plate should be banned altogether, and we shouldn’t have to go into why that might be.

13 NEW NSX

This particular license plate is only embarrassing because it’s just pointless. It doesn’t add anything, it isn’t clever—it’s a simple statement, telling people that the car you’re driving is, in fact, a new Acura NSX—the $150,000 supercar from the company. There are other plates out there that read “FAST NSX,” and simply “NSX.” Where do these people come from, and why do they have absolutely zero imagination? It’s quite a sad state of affairs when this is the best you can think of.

12 OMG MOV

This one is a little more lighthearted than the “I AM LATE” license plates, but not quite as much as the “MUAHAHA” ones. The owner of this license plate will drive a fast car, such as the McLaren pictured here, and this is what you’ll be reading when they cut you off in traffic. It’s to say that you’re going slow (even if you aren’t), and they demand to go faster. It’s a bit pretentious, but also kind of funny, although we wonder why they didn’t finish it off. After all, they had one letter left and could have spelled out: “OMGMOVE.” Maybe they just wanted that space in there.

11 BM WHAT

Here’s a pretty classic one that is less embarrassing and more clever. This vanity plate is attached to an Audi, one of BMW’s biggest competitors, and the driver of this car clearly wants you to know that Audi is superior to BMW. It’s almost a challenge of sorts—to tell BMW drivers everywhere that this car will beat you in a street race. Who knows if it’s true or not—that depends on the driver—but the license plate is pretty funny.

10 B3TANKFUL

Not sure how this person managed to get such a long vanity plate, but I guess in Australia that’s allowed. Anyway, this one is kind of clever and cute, because it has multiple meanings, depending on what mood you’re in. It’s either telling you to be thankful for what you have—great for this time of year—or to remind you that you’re running low on gas and should probably head to a gas station! Or a petrol station, depending on where you are…

9 U R NEXT

I would think this one would be fake if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve seen it on multiple cars in multiple states in my searches. Basically, it always belongs on a hearse, and reads “U R NEXT,” in a kind of morbid mood, reminding us all that life is finite and the end is inevitable. It’s a bit anxiety-giving, if only because not everyone wants to think about their own mortality when they’re on their Sunday afternoon drive.