Another week, another Sad Ben Affleck meme has appeared. This time the iconically huffy Oscar winner was seen sidling up to the passenger side of his car to open the door for his wife Jennifer Lopez, and looking away as he slammed it shut with such brute strength that it was, honestly, kind of hot.
Ben, who was sucking on one of his now signature iced coffees (he even advertised his beloved Dunkin Donuts during the Superbowl this year), looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders on Monday when the video was taken - and it’s since gone viral with social media users commenting things like, 'He always looks like he's fed up and annoyed’, and, 'You can "have it all" and still be miserable.’ One person simply wrote, 'Dude is goin through it.'
But of course - this is the internet after all - there was room for some spurious speculation about Ben and Jennifer’s marriage too. One Twitter user wrote, 'He purposefully looks away from her while she's getting in the car. They definitely fighting lol.'
Things went one step further a few days later when one online outlet hired a professional lip reader to monitor what the couple were saying to one another on the red carpet for Jen’s new Netflix film The Mother. Their words were billed in multiple headlines as a ‘tense exchange’ when in reality the lip reader found that they had merely discussed what Jennifer was wearing (the report details: ‘Jennifer appears to ask Ben whether her low cut top is "showing too much", prompting him to respond that it is fine.’).
The history of Sad Ben seems to be overshadowing his relationship with Jennifer, whom he married last summer after rekindling their relationship in 2021, 14 years after they originally ended their first engagement. His apparent dejected resignation was a huge feature of paparazzi photos taken of him in the years following his split from Jennifer Garner. The ‘Sad Ben’ meme was born when someone edited an interview a very reserved Ben gave with Henry Cavill, his Batman Vs Superman co-star, with Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’. Naomi Fry wrote for the The New Yorker at the time: ‘These depressed-Affleck images can arouse both amusement and a sense of poignancy, a touch of Schadenfreude as well as something like sympathy. “Same,” we might post on our social-media feeds, alongside a sad Ben picture.’
Now, though, the Sad Ben meme is growing to include speculation about his relationship to Jennifer, and that doesn’t seem fair. After the Golden Globes in February, it was reported that the couple had been fighting at their table, and photos of Ben looking annoyed and depressed were circulating on social media. But a seat filler later revealed on TikTok that Jennifer had showed him the photos during the ceremony and laughed. Influencer @almostannna posted on TikTok that Jennifer had said, “‘Honey, this is so funny, like look at this.’ And he was like, ‘Jesus Christ.'”
It’s been pointed out that Ben’s demeanour around photographers could very well be that he doesn’t like being followed by paparazzi, and having his face and body language decoded at all times. A 20 second clip of the couple walking down the street tells us close to nothing about how happy they are, so digging into their relationship based on tiny snapshots seems futile and potentially damaging. We also seem to have forgotten a little thing called Resting Bitch Face.