I’m glad there’s people out there with the integrity to fight for what they believe in, even against the unfeeling mass of something as large as a government. Jared Hyams is one such person, and the crude dick pic scrawled on his license is his cause, his banner, his everything.
It started as sort of a joke when the 33-year-old was filling out an electoral commission change of address form. He drew the simple but generally accurate dong instead of his signature, figuring he’d change it next year.
Not too surprisingly, the li’l dick pic made many officials uncomfortable. As he told The Age,
“But when I did this signature all of a sudden the shit hit the fan. I was receiving letters and phone calls telling me I couldn’t have it. I thought, that’s interesting, why not? “It sparked something in me. I didn’t understand if these people were offended or had taken it personally.”
That spark led him to adopt the dick pic as his actual, legal signature, attempting to use it on his driver’s license, passport, and other documents. His attempts were initially rejected, and his appeals derided as a waste of time and money, but he persevered and eventually managed to get a driver’s license and health care card with the wangnature.
Hyams describes his struggle and reasons by evaluating what, exactly, a signature is:
“What a signature is comes down to the function, not the actual form. Generally, it’s a person putting a mark on a piece of paper by their own hand. As soon as you start defining what a signature is you run into problems - if it’s meant to be someone’s name how do we define that because most signatures are just illegible scribble.”
Well, he’s not wrong.
(Thanks, Brett! Card images from Jared Hyams via The Age)
Contact the author at jason@jalopnik.com.