We teamed up with Canada-based creative agency WAX to create this project. And in case there’s any doubt about our intentions, together, we’ve built a website that teaches visitors how to tell if a story is credible or not. If you want to make sure yourself, we’ve included links explaining how to check if a story is credible or not on the site.

It’s uncertain that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will grant our request, but as long as this trademark’s pending, we’ll use this opportunity to send cease and desist letters to frequent abusers of the term — including Trump, of course. He should’ve already received our first one today.

“Referring to factual stories that are critical of your administration as FAKE NEWS (TM pending) is indeed trademark infringement,” the letter to Trump said. “You may not be aware, but your misuse of the term FAKE NEWS (TM pending) has greatly confused the American people and shaken their trust in the journalism that’s so vital to our democracy.”

For what it’s worth, we don’t expect the trademark to get approved. No one can really trademark a generic term like “fake news,” which started being used long before Trump even took office. What we do hope is that this idea is outrageous enough to get people to stop and think about what fake news is, and what it means to them.

We also want to use this time to remind people that journalists are human. We’re the watchdogs of society who work hard to present the public with facts for often little recognition, praise, and pay. So when a reader doesn’t like a story, threatening to shoot, lynch, or dox our family members isn’t really getting us up and excited in the morning.

I’m a young journalist who covers education and local government at a daily newspaper. I’ve been reporting for local, regional, and national outlets — including Teen Vogue — since 2016. In the last three years, I’ve been on the receiving end of ridicule, mockery, sexism and threats — all just for doing my job.

The grand irony in all this is something I worry the general public might not realize — namely, that journalists follow ethical codes and face losing our jobs and getting blacklisted by the industry if we so much as think about presenting “fake news.” (Although, even these kinds of ethical standards have ways of being warped, as the president’s favorite news channel knows all too well.)

Since it’s clear Trump has no plans to stop saying “fake news,” anytime soon — just look at his recent Twitter history — I’m personally looking forward to sending letters and tweets his way anytime he violates our pending trademark.

“If you fail to comply with our request, we may pursue legal action,” we wrote in the closing of our first letter to Trump. “But of course, this is satire — which is very different than what you refer to as ‘fake news.’ It might be asking too much for you to realize the difference.”

So yes, this is satire. It’s a joke. But it’s a joke with a point, and as any student of public discourse will tell you, a joke sometimes hits harder than the truth. And if anyone accuses us of trolling the president, well, nothing else seems to work with him, so what do we have to lose?

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Why Teens Are Creating Their Own News Outlets