Ben Affleck Smoking

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About

Ben Affleck Smoking is an image macro of a paparazzi photograph of actor Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette with a distressed look on his face wearing a blue sweater. In late 2016, the image was published online and rapidly became a meme format around the web throughout the following years, typically used to express exhaustion or weariness.

Origin

The earliest available usage of the photograph was published on The Cut^[1] on August 25th, 2016 (shown below). They wrote, "Ben Affleck loves to smoke and hates the thought of existing in his own body for the rest of his time on earth. This was made apparent earlier this week when he was spotted taking a long, shaky drag on a Camel after spending his 44th birthday with his estranged wife Jennifer Garner and their three children in London."

Spread

That day, Twitter ^[2] user @disparate tweeted a series of photographs of Affleck smoking. They captioned the tweet, "ben affleck smoking sadly is my new aesthetic as it's literally #me" (shown below, left).

On September 1st, Redditor ^[3] Reddit__PI posted the image in the /r/photoshopbattles subreddit (photoshop example below, center).

Later that year, the Twitter account for UNILAD tweeted^[4] the image with the caption "How everyone feels after spending 48 hours with family." The tweet is credited to @tank.sinatra, a private Instagram account.

Facemask Pictures

On April 24th, 2020, Ben Affleck was photographed smoking while wearing a protective facemask (shown below).

The pictures drew comparisons to other existential pictures of Affleck. For example, Twitter user @David_Rudnick^[5] posted, "Ben Affleck's principal body of work – a soul-destroying practice where he forces himself to exist in public as the manifest embodiment of absolute male misery – is one of the strongest of any living artist," gaining over 47,000 retweets (shown below, left). User @emamma_mia^[6] wrote, "finally another photo to add to the ben affleck smoking through the pain of existence canon," gaining over 2,900 retweets (shown below, right).