The Simpsons (kind of) responds to claims that Homer will stop choking Bart

Earlier this week, the internet collectively noticed that Homer hasn’t choked Bart for a while on The Simpsons, with the revelation being prompted by a line in the most recent episode where Homer said that he doesn’t strangle Bart anymore because “times have changed.” It reads like a one-off joke in context, but then people who have stuck with the show in recent years pointed out that Homer hasn’t actually choked Bart onscreen for years—seemingly indicating that, yes, he won’t be doing it anymore.

But today, The Simpsons’ executive producers passed along a response to Variety in the form of a doodle by creator Matt Groening. The image features Bart holding up a phone that says “Simpsons: No more strangling,” while Homer strangles him and says “Why you little clickbaiting!!” The producers also included a note: “Homer Simpsons was unavailable for comment as he was busy strangling Bart.”

So that… doesn’t really explain anything? Does it mean Homer will still be choking Bart? Does it mean Homer never stopped choking Bart? Because we know that’s not true. Also, what does Homer think “clickbaiting” is? Is he saying that Bart wrote the news articles about the strangling? Is he saying that it was a lie to suggest that The Simpsons would stop Homer from choking bart? Because he hasn’t done it in years and he said on the show that he wasn’t going to do it anymore, so saying “Homer hasn’t choked Bart in years and he said he’s not going to do it anymore” seems like a safe assumption to make.

All we know is that Homer may or may not choke Bart again in the future, that Principal Skinner is actually a no-good street punk named Armin Tamzarian, and that the cash register says NRA4EVER when Maggie gets scanned as a nod to Groening’s radical right-wing politics.