Romantic situationship

Disclaimer: Reader discretion advised. e content of this article aims to help exercise your faculty of judgement, reason, and scienti c/academic background.

After conducting a rigorous review process for two weeks, the primary investigators of the inquiry into situationships reach the conclusion that ‘situationship,’ a word that comes from ‘relationship,’ engages heavily with semantics and human signifying processes. A number of key themes were identi ed through the text-based interviews conducted via Instagram:

1. ‘FWB’ (Friends with Bene ts), sexual connotations, intimacy

2. Love, romantic, emotional connection

3. More, plus, di erent

4. Relationship, going out, dating

5. Friendship

6. Negative sentiments (e.g. concern, vulnerable, fear, stigma and promiscuity, imbalance, sticky, unsure, inconsistent, di cult, adverse)

7. Semantics (e.g. know, signals, de nition, say/regard, interpret, literal(ly))

Although the primary investigators will not go over each of the categories, we have identi ed that the word ‘situationship’ arises from a need to de ne the unde nable. e de nition and understanding of situationship range from being closer to a friendship, to a relationship, and to uncharted territory (Figure 1). Engaging a Derridean lens of analysis, the properties of the signi er are more important than one may think. e word situationship is fundamentally built on the word relationship, with the su x ‘ship’ attached to the noun ‘situation,’ forming a new noun that denotes a property or state of being. us, as one interviewee argues, “BY DEFINITION and nothing else,” the term “literally doesn’t mean anything else other than the status quo” (Interview 2023). e signifying di erence connoted by the word situationship is accompanied by the constant deference of meaning—it engages in a verbal and interpretative play with other more clearly de ned stages in a romantic/non-romantic relationship between two parties. However, this relative clarity may also be an illusionary false promise as they, too, engage in a verbal and interpretative signifying play with the signi ed ‘real life’ context-scenario, other signi ers, and economic socio-cultural contexts.

However, as seen in Figure 1, when the responses are charted on a spectrum, there are clusters around FWB and dating, with romantic implications, and there is a clear attempt in de ning what does not exist. is re ects a need to use language to re ect a phenomenon, as the term ‘situationship’ enters the vocabulary of younger generations. One interviewee also identi ed a possible correlation between the zeitgeist of the existential angst of teenagers of this generation who grew up in an increasingly complex, interconnected, and information/media-bombarded environment. is angst can be explained as being re ected through the rejection of “traditional conformities of a traditional relationship; labelled as such by Western societal standards” (Interview 2023). Although arguments can be made that teenagers across all temporal-spatial axes are universally weary of commitment and unable to de ne it clearly—as one respondent put it, “a general fear of intimacy and commitment of the generation that coined it” (Interview 2023). is argument may be criticised as generalising, having reductionist properties, and overly seeking commonalities across the temporal-spatial axes of things. Finally, when being compared to a relationship, there seems to be a lack of a clear de nable ‘we’ in situationships. What seems to be in place instead is two individuals who are connected by ambiguity.

It has been far too long that we have been living a lie—the Earth is, and will remain, FLAT.

Yes, the reports are wrong. Yes, the images are all photoshopped.

Yes, the Earth is indeed at, like a pancake.

Since time immemorial, people who have believed in the Earth being a at disc, not a ‘geoid,’ have been ridiculed and called ‘lunatics’ for their assumptions. But it is time we acknowledge that the Earth is indeed at. Researchers from the University of Malta have collected information over the span of 50 years, which proves that the Earth is at—their research was underfunded and was skeptically received, but they did it anyway—collecting data from all around the world, ultimately ending right where they started. While such ground-breaking, earth-shattering research was going on, everything had to be kept under wraps, as they were worried that people would not understand and treat this extremely important discovery as a scam.

According to Zetetic Astronomy—the belief system of Samuel Rowbotham, famously known as the founder of the what would become the Flat Earth Society in the 1800s— the Earth is actually a at disc, centred at the North Pole and bound on the sides by large walls of ice and glaciers, with other celestial bodies only a few thousand miles away. is branch of astronomy has its roots in a translation of the Bible where the Earth was created as “the Firmament,” or a at surface covered by a dome. Even though our religious cosmology talks about the nature of at Earth, we are too blind to believe it.

Some people say that it is possible to notice the curvature of Earth from certain places on Earth, which is a clear indication of how blind people can be in their assumptions and their ‘evidence.’ Clearly, this so-called curvature of the Earth is a mirage, or a visual deception—when we truly want something to be true, our mind plays tricks on us (not me though). In this process, we fail to see what is right there in front of us. If the Earth was truly “round,” how come we can see buildings standing straight?? How come we are able to walk in a straight line without veering to the ‘centre?’ Oh, well, thank you for bringing up gravity—tell me this: why is a magnet, an object whose purpose is to attract other metallic objects, and the clue to our tangible understanding of gravity, not round? Important gures such as the rapper B. o. B., too, believe that the Earth is truly at. is is not a conspiracy, this is blatant denial of a hard-to-swallow pill—reality.

Why is it that we are so afraid of admitting the truth? What is so wrong with the Earth being at, especially when it is the answer to most of our burning questions? Does this have to do with the fact that the human brain looks for curvature in everything they desire—their foods and produce, their bodies, and now even their planet?! It is perhaps due to this ignorance of ours that Earth’s tourism from other planets has decreased drastically—even our fellow Martian friends have said, “It is because of you Earthlings’ stupidity that we do not want to visit you anymore. And technology has only made you stupider. Shame.” e rise of Photoshop has brainwashed people across the planet—the images from space (for the amount of littering that occurs, the ‘Earth’ sure looks clean from up there), the pictures of ships on ‘horizons’ (that’s the edge of the Earth, people—an actual, straight edge), and pictures of Everest (which is just the tall edge of our glacial walls). But now, people are starting to realise the truth, and are gaining the courage to accept it. For those who are daring enough to see and experience the truth, the Flat Earth Society opens its arms far and wide to you, accepting people from all around the globe.