Image copyright Twitter/xzhyrax Image caption '#HowToConfuseAMillennial starter pack'

Older, and supposedly wiser, heads should perhaps have realised that engaging an enemy on its own territory might not be a good idea.

When the battleground is social media and the opposing armies are people who can remember a time before the internet and those who can't, then there is likely to be only one winner.

That's sort of what happened this weekend, when a hashtag mocking millennials was rapidly taken over by the very people it was trying to target, and repurposed to highlight the sins of the older generation.

The hashtag #HowToConfuseAMillennial surfaced on Sunday and rapidly became the top trend in the US. It appears to have been spawned by a site set up to encourage hashtag games, and before long older people were obligingly using it to lay into the younger generation.

It started out as fairly gentle ribbing.

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter/@GibsonTwist

But there was also a harder edge to some of the posts. A feeling that the younger generation might be a bunch of digitally-obsessed ingrates with a horrific sense of entitlement and who frankly didn't really know they were born.

Image copyright Twitter/PoliticalShort

Image copyright Twitter/ZavidBowie

Some pointed out the irony of using social media to make these sort of points.

Image copyright twitter

A raw nerve had clearly been touched and before long there was a fightback. The millennials were on the march and soon their posts swamped those of their parents and grandparents. Baby boomers and the world they had created were the main targets of the younger generation's ire.

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

Image copyright Twitter

We'll leave the last word to Scout Black who, in one tweet, summed up, what many felt about the trend.

Image copyright Twitter

Blog by Harry Low

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