On Nov. 8, the #おじさんLINE 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 おじさんLINEごっこ (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. “I will be careful not to send おじさんLINE from now on,” 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.”
『オジサンになりきろう講座』
これを見れば、オジサンの文章を作ることができます。
このツイートのリプライ欄であなたのオジサンの文(クソリプ)を待ってます。#おじさんあるある#あるある#すれみ1日1絵 pic.twitter.com/9n0RkJf0eN— すれみ (@_Smitter2) April 1, 2017
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 お爺さん (ojiisan, or grandfathers).
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