It’s kind of become a tradition as of late that every year, on April Fools’ Day, tech companies try to one-up each other on who can announce the craziest product and maybe catch some unsuspecting blog readers off guard. This year, Twitter’s entry into the April Fools’ prank pool is simply terrifying.

Today, Twitter has “announced” Twttr, the new no-vowel Twitter service that will now become the default service for all users.

If you want your vowels back, you’re going to have to pay $5 a month.

“We’re doing this because we believe that by eliminating vowels, we’ll encourage a more efficient and “dense” form of communication. We also see an opportunity to diversify our revenue stream,” says Twitter.

Don’t worry – you still get the letter “y.”

“Because our users come first, we believe that ‘Y’ should always be free to everyone — today and forever. You’ll notice in the Twttr example above, the ‘y’ is clearly visible. Also, the vowels in URLs will be also be free for everyone, forever. You can also Tweet in non-Latin characters based languages, like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic or Korean. These languages will remain unaffected by our service change.”

Twyttyr? Why byy vywyls whyn yyy gyt “Y” fyr fryy? Syckyrs! #nvwls

— Joan Rivers (@Joan_Rivers) April 1, 2013

Yikes. Twitter is already a minefield when it comes to navigating grammar – forcing 140 characters makes even the best of us resort to devious tactics. But no vowels? The mere thought is nightmare-inducing.

Alongside the no-vowel prank, Twitter also says that they’ve expanded Promoted Tweets to 141 characters, for an additional fee. One extra character is it, though. Don’t try to buy two.

Good thing this one is only a joke. If you want to get in an the fun, write your no-vowel tweets and include the hashtag #nvwls. Or, if you’ve decided to pay the fee to get your vowels back, you can tweet using the #icanhasvowels hashtag.