Even as social media has made mega-celebrities' private lives that much more transparent to fans, the days of speculating about their love lives still haven't fully gone away. Headline-making TV and film stars like Matthew Perry and Ben Affleck have been spotted on the Raya dating app making contact with much younger women, and users have outed the actors for it online. The reactions to these awkward and divisive personal reveals have been kind of polarized, with returning Twitter queen Chrissy Teigen offering a double-edged hot take.
The major concern that most people seem to be having with Matthew Perry and Ben Affleck's dating app drama is that the women being contacted are rather young in comparison. The 48-year-old Affleck was reportedly in contact with a 29-year-old woman, while Perry, at 51, was matched with a 19-year-old Raya user. Others have pointed out that the women are of a legal, consenting age, and that putting the high-profile actors’ personal business on blast is perhaps mean-spirited. Chrissy Teigen put everybody on blast, though, saying:
Trying to maintain a private dating life for celebrities is certainly a rough road to tread. People have obviously been talking non-stop about Ben Affleck’s love life for way longer than any dating apps have existed. His relationship with Ana de Armas ended quite publicly, and many couldn’t help but laugh when photos emerged of de Armas’ life-size cardboard cut-out being put out with his trash. The Internet has also been collectively losing its mind of late that the Batman star might be reuniting with former flame Jennifer Lopez following her own split from A-Rod, but the fact that there's so much speculation without any confirmation is part of the point here .
In any case, in the era of Me Too, it appears many are not willing to let major age disparities in relationships pass by without commentary. Still, the 19-year-old who matched with Matthew Perry and then posted about it was met with a backlash of her own for not respecting Perry’s privacy. She explained her reasoning with Page Six recently, saying:
I just did it more for the joke of it, which sounds mean, but I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was more so innocent and harmless. Honestly, it’s not really OK for these older guys to be talking to such young girls.
No matter the circumstances, though, Chrissy Teigen never shies away from giving her opinion on public forums, even if it prompts its own backlash for the model. The Lip Sync Battle co-host returned to Twitter earlier this year after a brief break, saying that it “feels terrible to silence yourself.” In the past, she has called out her husband John Legend, the maybe-maybe not realness of Selling Sunset, and even Fox News anchor Jeanine Pirro for having Teigen’s boob pic on her phone, so her commenting on this situation was to be expected.
Matthew Perry and Ben Affleck, both of whom have yet to respond to the dating app backlash, can at the very least add themselves to the growing lineup of names that make up Chrissy Teigen’s Twitter burn list.
