Of all the things that could go viral in 2024 — celebrity drama, political chaos, AI blunders — nobody expected the latest global sensation to come from a parking lot in Perth. But there it was: a completely ordinary Kia Sportage, sitting between shopping carts and sun-bleached concrete. Nothing special.
Until someone looked at the license plate.
370HSSV
At first glance, it looked like any random jumble of numbers and letters. But flip it upside down — the way a bored passenger or mischievous teenager might — and suddenly the plate transforms into a not-so-subtle insult that would have earned any student a trip to the principal’s office.
A hidden joke. Perfectly clean when upright. Absolutely not clean when inverted.
And the internet loved it.
A Facebook user named Jeffrey snapped a photo of the car and posted it to The Bell Tower Times 2.0 page. Within hours, the comments exploded. Thousands of laughing emojis. Shares flying across platforms. People tagging friends with, “LOOK AT THIS,” “I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING,” and “HOW DID THIS GET APPROVED?!”
That’s when the real fun began.
Because somehow… it did get approved.
Western Australia’s transport authority rejects hundreds of personalized plate applications every year — sometimes for mildly suggestive words, sometimes for vague references to drugs, booze, or even aggressive-sounding phrases. They’ve banned:
SAUC3D
RAMP4GE
BUYAGRAM
F4K3 T4XI
Yet 370HSSV — a plate that becomes an upside-down insult instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever doodled in a math notebook — sailed right through.
Accidentally? On purpose? A bureaucratic oversight? A genius troll?
Nobody knows. And that mystery only made the story blow up more.
A worldwide meme overnight
What started as a local Facebook post spread across the globe. Before long, people from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Singapore — everywhere — were laughing along and sharing their own stories of sneaky plates.
Reddit launched threads rating inappropriate license plates. Former transport employees joked that this must’ve been approved “on a sleepy Friday afternoon.” People debated whether the plate should be banned or celebrated. Others insisted it was “peak Aussie humor” and should be protected at all costs.
The funniest part? No one knows whether the car’s owner meant it.
The internet collectively imagined scenarios:
A mastermind troll patiently waiting years for someone to flip it upside down
A confused driver suddenly finding themselves internet famous
A transport official somewhere muttering, “I KNEW something felt off about that one…”
A tiny moment — but a perfect one
The whole thing became a small cultural reset. No politics. No scandals. No drama. Just a harmless optical prank that united millions of strangers in a shared laugh.
It reminded people that viral moments don’t always need to be outrageous — sometimes, all it takes is six characters, a curious mind, and a good upside-down flip.
And now, 370HSSV has officially joined the hall of fame of internet curiosities — the kind that will resurface in memes for years to come.
Because in a world overflowing with heavy headlines, a mischievous license plate from a Perth parking lot somehow gave everyone exactly what they needed:
A clever joke, a collective giggle, and proof that humor can hide in the most ordinary places — even on the back of a Kia.