We live in an era where social media has become one of the driving forces in all of popular culture. Big stars like Dwayne Johnson make a significant part of their income from social posts, and it’s rare for a major celebrity not to have a social media presence. And yet, Ben Affleck has none.
The actor, who can currently be seen in The Rip with a Netflix subscription, recently appeared on the All The Smoke YouTube channel, where he was asked why he wasn’t on social media at all. He gave an honestly pretty solid reason why out of the gate, saying that he was confident that if he said what he thought often, he’d eventually get in trouble for it. He explained…
I could give you a lot of answers about that, but the truth is I just know I’d get in trouble.
As reasons to stay off social media go, this may be the single best reason to just say forget it. If Affleck weighed in on politics or some controversial issue, it doesn’t even matter what he said; it would likely upset somebody. We’ve frequently seen celebrities on social media get in trouble with the public for what their statements are interpreted as meaning, even if it’s not really what they said.
It's also been argued that actors shouldn't have social media because follower counts have reportedly been used to decide what actors get roles.
It’s not that Ben Affleck doesn’t have opinions. He’s very open about the fact that he does, and perhaps if you knew him well and were just talking, he’d be happy to tell you what he thinks. But he knows there are plenty of people who simply wouldn’t care what he has to say. He continued…
I mean, I got in enough trouble in my life to know — I do, I like to talk, and I have opinions. And then I think like, I learned early on, as I’ve been around and been through a couple of cycles of up and down that’s also like, sometimes people don’t want to hear all that much from actors. And there is a level that’s kind of appropriate but, honestly, that’s kind of bulls–t, too.
In the end, it seems Ben Affleck just understands that social media is basically a full-time job in itself, and he can’t imagine piling on the work that goes with it on top of everything else he does. Affleck said…
The truth is I don’t want to deal with the backlash of something all the time. What I see from people who do it, even people who do it well, it’s a huge amount of work. Because all of a sudden, I see people sweating. ‘I gotta post something, I gotta get something up there.’ I’m like, ‘You’re putting this whole other job on top of what you’re doing.
One has to wonder if one of the people that Ben Affleck is talking about is Jennifer Lopez. She absolutely has a major social media presence, and while she handles it well, it’s been suggested that the way the two of them handled their private life may have been part of what caused their eventual split.
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