On Nov. 8, the #¤ª¤¸¤µ¤óLINE hashtag topped Japan Trending rankings on Twitter. The hashtag refers to the manner in which ojisan (middle-aged men) text other people.

That same day, news program ¡°Mezamashi TV¡± unveiled its top five tendencies of middle-aged men when they text. According to the program, middle-aged men send long messages and weird compliments, start talking about themselves without being asked, use ¡°-chan¡± as a suffix for surnames and add countless emoji and emoticons to messages.

Most middle-aged men are attempting to be polite when texting in this way, but many teenagers feel irritated or even a little intimidated upon receiving such texts. Recently, however, teenage girls are beating middle-aged men at their own game and sending messages in the same way as their older counterparts. Dubbed (ojisan LINE gokko), such messages typically combine a long text with myriad emoji.

Following the program, a number of people posted their thoughts on Twitter. wrote Twitter user @tabo_505. Another Twitter user posting under the handle @_Smitter shared some pictures that offered others guidance on how to text like a middle-aged man, with the tweet receiving 73,000 retweets and 87,000 ¡°likes.¡±

While this is all very well and good, we now just have to pray that the trend doesn¡¯t escalate and teenagers actually start texting like ¤ª ”¤µ¤ó (ojiisan, or grandfathers).