This… “could mean nothing”? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your tags, and you type… I don’t know, #DOOMED BOSTON YAOI on that one article about Ben Affleck showing up ringless at Matt Damon’s house, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about their cultural impact and shared filmography, but what you don’t know is that that post is not just about “doomed Boston yaoi”, it’s not about J-Lo, it’s not even about Good Will Hunting; it’s about the extent to which they have purposely and publicly entwined themselves— not just in life but as a PR strategy— ever since the calculated awards narrative of the 1998 Oscar race. Perhaps even earlier. You think it’s a coincedence that they make sure to talk about each other in every interview they’ve ever done. What am I saying? You’ve never seen The Last Duel. You haven’t even seen Dogma. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that, after the 2010s, when Matt was dithering in between franchises, and Ben was being widely mocked as Batman, I think it was Artists Equity, wasn’t it?… where they leveraged their public partnership to collaborate as film producers and bolster one another’s images. Hmm.. I think we need a feel-good sports biopic here. Perhaps some clever Dunkin ads? And then Matt and Ben posting quickly showed up in the posts of eight different popular bloggers. Then it filtered down through the reblogs of thousands of plebeian Tumblr users who proudly watch a single movie per year in the cinema, and then through viral tweets and TikToks from normies in your area… and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner of the internet where you, no doubt, fished it out of the bottom of your likes. However, that article represents millions of posts about countless incidents of publicly expressed affection— real affection, of course, but also the fuel of a carefully crafted public image strategy (the dichotomy of which only increases the entertaining tension and romance of their relationship), and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from sincerely caring about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck when, in fact, you’re reblogging a post that was selected for you by the people in this room… from a pile of what “could mean nothing.”
