Does your teen seem kind of gay? Not gay in the usual way, but gay in the terrifying evil old McCarthyite lawyer way? Has your teen started speaking in something like a 1950s Jewish New York accent but with the impeccable vocal flourish of Al Pacino or Nathan Lane? Is your child as hellbent on eradicating the Communist menace from American culture as they are on filling the void in their own rotten-black heart with meaningless earthly acquisitions of power? If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, then your son or daughter may have gotten into the burgeoning internet phenomenon of Roy Cohn Kinning.

Put simply, Roy Cohn Kins (as they are known) are young people who believe that they are, literally, notoriously corrupt and closeted gay lawyer Roy Marcus Cohn (1927-1986), or at least the semi-fictionalized version of him, written by Tony Kushner in his Pulitzer-winning dramatic epic Angels in America.

Like most fads, Roy Cohn Kinning is often harmless. Lengthy poetic diatribes comparing the law to the human digestive system or explaining why Ethel Rosenberg deserved the death penalty can actually be a good way for teenage kids to let off steam! And anyway, most kids nowadays spend a lot of time on their phones, even if most kids’ phone isn’t a landline with ten extensions and rows and rows of flashing buttons that bleep and beep and whistle incessantly, making chaotic music underneath everything they say. Sometimes, however, these would-be titans of Conservatism take things a little too far. In order to make sure your young one’s Cohn Persona (RoyCohna) doesn’t cause harm to them or others, be sure keep watch for the following signs:

-Does your teen make sinister references to the Justice Department and the flowers withering without the sun? If so, it’s possible they have reached the Disbarment Hearing Phase of Roy Cohn Kinning. If this is the case, it is imperative that you act quickly.

-Is your teen hoarding hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of life-saving, pending-FDA-approval medication? Evil Lawyer Kinning is all well and good as long as no one gets hurt, but indirectly causing the deaths of thousands of other patients out of mean-spiritedness and misdirected self-hatred is no joke.

-Is your teen’s RoyCohna trying to seduce a sad, twinky Mormon lawyer by telling said lawyer he or she wants to be his father/mentor figure? That’s disturbing, especially given that your teen is, you know, a teen, and also I think that guy’s married. Moving on:

-Is your teen standing waist-deep in lava, trying to convince God to hire him or her as His defense attorney in a divorce case with the Heavenly Host? This scene is cut from most editions of Perestroika, so if your teenage offspring has incorporated it into their RoyCohna then it’s possible they’ve gotten a little too deeply into this play.

-Has the wrathful phantasm of Ethel Rosenberg returned from the grave to haunt your family? If so, it’s possible that your child has unwittingly disturbed supernatural/geopolitical forces of a magnitude your tiny mind cannot begin to grasp. There is no hope for you if this is the case. Leave the country, and if possible, the planet, immediately.

Thanks for reading! Up next: What can J. Edgar Hoover teach us about Generation Z?