Ben Affleck responds to tattoo criticism

Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube, Twitter/@BenAffleck

Ben Affleck breaks silence on his ‘garish’ back tattoo

He's not sad, you're sad.

 

Audra Schroeder

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 29, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 8:10 pm CDT

The month of March has been dominated by thoughts and prayers over Ben Affleck‘s mysterious back tattoo. It became a meme. It became a talking point.

Over the weekend, the New Yorker published a piece titled “The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck,” complete with a photo of him staring at the ocean. It posited that the “image suggests not just the fall of Affleck but the coming fall of man.”

Today, the actor decided it was time to set the record straight.

People on Twitter seemed to enjoy Affleck’s response, and some responded with Batman memes.

Let’s take a look at that tattoo again, which is supposedly a phoenix rising from the ashes. Affleck did not comment on the choice of his tattoo, unfortunately.

The tweet marks the first time Affleck has publicly addressed the tattoo since it became a meme; he claimed in a 2016 interview that it was fake, but Henry Cavill’s face told another story. What a journey.

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*First Published: Mar 29, 2018, 4:46 pm CDT