There are certain constants in this chaotic world: death, taxes, and Ben Affleck staring into the middle distance like a man who just remembered he left the oven on.
The man has built an entire second career out of being photographed at his absolute lowest emotional ebb, and honestly, we should be thanking him for it.
The latest installment dropped this week when paparazzi caught the Oscar winner at a coffee shop in Los Angeles looking like he was mentally calculating the exact cost of his divorce lawyers.
Within hours, the image had been memed into oblivion, with captions ranging from "me pretending to understand my 401k" to "when the group chat goes silent after you send a joke." This is a guy who once won an Academy Award for writing a movie about a guy who hates his life.
Art imitating life imitating a Dunkin' commercial.
Somewhere, a publicist is aging in dog years.
Let's be clear about what's actually happening here.
He's just existing in public with a face that suggests he's been forced to attend a timeshare presentation.
The internet, starved for content that isn't a new app selling your data, has decided this is the hero's journey we all deserve.
Fine, whatever, it's cheaper than therapy.
The memes write themselves. "Ben Affleck at the Met Gala" is a genre unto itself. "Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette in his car" could be hung in the Louvre next to a placard reading "Existential Dread, 2023, Mixed Media on Paparazzi Zoom Lens." The man has become a Rorschach test for whatever anxiety you're personally avoiding.
But here's the thing nobody wants to admit: we're not laughing at him.
The collective internet has decided that a rich, famous, objectively successful guy is the perfect avatar for our own low-grade misery.
It's projection with a side of schadenfreude, and we're all ordering seconds.
Also, and this feels important, the guy keeps getting photographed eating Dunkin' donuts and looking vaguely betrayed by the universe.
If anything, he's the most relatable celebrity we've got left.
He's just a dude who wants coffee and to be left alone, and the universe keeps handing him a camera crew and a sad sandwich.
Tag your friend who's been going through it since 2021.
Ben Affleck will survive this, because he always does.
He'll bounce back with a new movie, a new relationship, or at minimum a new Dunkin' partnership.
The man is not okay, and neither are we, and that's somehow the whole point. **The Takeaway:** We've turned a guy drinking coffee into a national mood ring, which says way more about us than it does about him.
Final Thoughts
If you're laughing at a millionaire's sad face to avoid dealing with your own problems, congratulations, you're an American.