Smell that? Something is in the air. Or maybe the water. Something is somewhere. The stars, much like birds, are fighting back.

You’ll remember the rolling kerfuffles between our famous denizens and the peons who cover them that began earlier this year: Lizzo subtweeted a Pitchfork review. Justin Bieber called out an E! News host by name. Ariana Grande piled on Bieber’s tweet, and opened it up to all bloggers in general, tweeting, and later deleting, “One day everybody that works at all them blogs will realize how unfulfilled they are and purposeless what they’re doing is…i can’t wait for them to feel lit inside.” As if bloggers can ever hope to feel joy.

But now there’s been a curious escalation in the form: Two CW stars have bitten back after details they didn’t love ended up in a cover story about both of them. On Thursday, W magazine published an article featuring both Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse, Riverdale teens who dated and lived together for a time. It opened pondering the question of why they insisted on being interviewed separately. Reinhart told the writer, David Amsden, “We’re acknowledging that we’re in a relationship, but it’s a small part of who we are as people. We want our own separate identities.” Amsden wrote that he suspected they were heading toward a breakup because of the weird request. And when Us Weekly reported that the couple had broken up after they spoke to Amsden, but days before the piece was published, the writer took it as confirmation he was right all along, and said as much in the piece.

Sprouse and Reinhart apparently did not approve. They both posted the cover to Instagram (nice of them) with some mild to hot-n-spicy words for Amsden (not so nice!). Reinhart wrote, “BREAKING: A reliable source has confirmed that none of you know shit.” Cole posted, “UNPRECEDENTED: Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart consume the flesh of ‘reliable sources’ to fuel their bacchanalian sex cult.” Amazing to have just read A Secret History.

So I suppose they’re still together. Or they’re not together, but we shouldn’t care? Can’t tell, but this is an impressively coordinated refutation of…something.

The celebrity impulse to call out false or unflattering coverage isn’t new, of course. This particular set-up has been happening for a decade or so, or whenever everyone got an Instagram account. The means of rumor-wrangling has very much been in the hands of its subjects since.