No matter what I change status line to with set statusline my status line will not change. It looks like
".vimrc" 39L, 578C 1,1 All
with the cursor position and the percentage through the file as well as the filesize and filename. It is the only line at the bottom.
How to I hide or change the status line?
How do I clear the status line?
Why is the status line not working?
What you are looking at is a ruler - a "statusline" in a way, but not a statusline. What can be changed in it you can see in help rulerformat.
If you wish to hide the ruler set set noruler, and afterwards enable the statusline with set laststatus=2 if you wish for every window to have their own statusline (the most common). Depending on what you want in your statusline, you might wish to read help statusline, and afterwards put it in set statusline=... (when adding options add them with set statusline+=... one by one - that way you can more easily turn some on or off).
As the first line, when setting statusline, set set statusline= that way statusline is cleared before it is loaded again. You'll figure this out when you source it the first few times.