Lesson 10

do you guys remember relationship posting on facebook? is that still a thing? I haven't touched Facebook in about 8 years so I don't really know the culture anymore. I mean that is what we're going to be talking about here but that's not what we're here to talk about. let's talk about heathcliff:

for starters, I will have to rewind and touch on the helmets of the past 2 days because, well it seems we have a bit of a theme week going on and those are always my favorites. but before I can catch up on those things, let's just approach it head on (like a helmet).

when it comes to the relationship status on facebook, they added the option to put it's complicated which sparked all kinds of cultural shifts in the way we talk about our romantic lives on the platform and a wave of jilted lovers and jokes and memes.

one of the major points of friction with the status is that if you are publicly saying that it's complicated, what does that mean to your partner? did the two of you come to that decision together or are you just sign posting that your relationship is on the rocks? a lot of people discovered that their relationship was not nearly as strong and stable as they thought it was when their partner updated that status. it led to tons of arguments.

for some people, it was an open offer: "can you be less complicated than my current relationship? you might be able to take me out of it and have me for yourself."

now let's take this back to the comic for the day. not only is Heathcliff wearing a helmet that says it's complicated, it is a massive helmet. he has the noggin boss of Heathcliff helmets. we all know that helmets sort of broadcast the internal thoughts of the character to the outer world. they serve as the billboard of the mind. by having such a large helmet, I believe the idea is that Heathcliff is loudly and proudly broadcasting that thought, he's making it very obvious what the current state of the relationship is which irritates Sonja because he is not communicating with her about it, he is just telling the entire world how he feels and lumping her in with the rest of the world in finding this out.

the simple fact that he carries on as if everything is normal while also broadcasting this is another one of those classic points of friction with the Facebook relationship status. it doesn't actually communicate anything to your partner that they can work with in trying to resolve the issue.

everything about it harkens back to the immaturity of high school crushes which I think is a fair reason to be irritated at your boyfriend, Sonja. I think you should take that big helmet and beat him over the head with it