Class, gather round for How Not to Respond to Your Wife’s Major Career Milestone 101. On Tuesday, Hailey Bieber made her solo debut on the cover of Vogue, opening up about her wellness routine and her “scary” birth experience, which is putting it…mildly. But rather than marking the moment with your standard Wife-Guy post (“Congrats, goo goo” would have sufficed), Justin Bieber shared a story that he probably — read: definitely — should’ve kept to himself. Recalling a “huge fight” the two had, Justin wrote in an Instagram caption, “I told hails that she would never be on the cover of vogue.” Then, in a sudden moment of self-awareness, he added, “Yikes I know, so mean.” Naturally, a good portion of the internet agreed (“you couldn’t waterboard this information out of me lmao,” one person commented), and some compared it to a (much kinder) post he made for one of Kendall Jenner’s Vogue covers. Even People and Vanity Fair (politely) described his reaction as “bizarre.” That might explain why, hours later, the Man Who Pioneered a New Way To Wear Hats seemingly deleted the caption and replaced it with a few carefully curated emoji — which, if you squint hard enough, could be something resembling an apology.

Now, this is hardly the first time that Justin’s cryptic Instagram missives and general behavior have raised eyebrows and sparked concern. See: Justin’s public beef with his own fashion brand, this tense confrontation with paparazzi, videos of Justin partying at Coachella, and this 13-video, face-filtered Instagram carousel. (For the record, in February, a rep for the Biebers told TMZ that the chatter about his well-being was proof “people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive.”) Nor is it the first time that the couple’s social media activity has ramped up speculation about the state of their marriage (never forget when they unfollowed and re-followed each other, then blamed it on a hack and glitch). Seven years into their marriage, practically anything they do is spun as evidence of an impending split — something Hailey addressed for, oh, the 3000th time in her Vogue interview, calling it “a mindfu*k” and “not real.” At least, based on her unexpectedly funny “In the Bag” video, she’s a good sport.