Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have been one of Hollywood’s “it” couples for years, partly because of how normal they look despite their incredibly glamorous lives.
Instead of cultivating the usual celebrity aloofness, their self-deprecating jokes and constant banter on Instagram have become something of a pop culture institution.
And each new iteration is always met with a resounding chorus of fans declaring their marital “relationship goals.”
But their hook is starting to wear a bit thin for some fans, who are starting to feel like the whole thing is an act — and one that’s long overdue.
In a recent thread on the “r/popculturechat” subReddit, a fan bluntly asked, “Why do people love Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively?”
And the answers show that plenty of pop culture vultures have had it with Hollywood’s craziest couple.
Fans started airing their negative feelings about Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.
Many fans aren’t buying Reynolds and Lively’s “perfect” marriage and think it’s all just another Hollywood PR stunt.
Faced with the carefully crafted public personas of celebrities, it’s easy to forget that they are, after all, gazillionaire celebrities whose lives are nothing like the lives of normal people.
In the case of Reynolds and Lively, many people feel that they are taking the whole “normal” thing too far.
One Redditor called the pair “manufactured,” while another called their “lol so bizarre personality” a calculated move conjured up by their PR team.
A TikTok user took a similar view, claiming that the constant self-poking is just a modern iteration of the ball and chain culture.
Another commenter on Reddit said that the more a couple “try to push the perfect narrative of marriage/relationship goals online, the less I trust them.”
Fans have had it with Reynolds and Lively’s constant trolling.
Reynolds and Lively’s constant trolling on social media has become an institution among fans.
Fans seem to especially love Reynolds’ annual roasts of Lively on her birthday, like the one below in 2019 where he posted a series of unflattering photos of his wife.
But for some fans, the act got old really fast. One Redditor called Reynolds’ entire style “too much cringe for me,” while another pointed out that his jokes are the same, even in his movies.
The user wrote: “His humor is very dated when you consider that he makes jokes the same way over and over again.”
“He’ll say something funny with a very straight face and then just stare at the person he’s saying it to.”
Another wrote that while they like Lively, they “hate him” and are particularly annoyed by Reynolds’ trolling of his wife, which they wrote “comes from trying too hard.”
One Redditor heartily agreed, calling Reynolds trolls of Lively, such as a 2017 birthday post in which Lively was cropped out of the photo entirely, “really old.”
And then they made the most unfavorable comparison to Reynolds’ comedic stylings – “It’s kind of lame to me as quirky boomer humor.”
Oh. Tough but fair.
Still, for every person who seems to hate Reynolds and Lively, there’s another who loves them and “doesn’t get intense hate,” as one Redditor put it.
In the end, Reynolds and Lively’s portrayal of the perfect and hilarious celebrity marriage on social media doesn’t hurt anyone.
But after years and years of public appearances, it’s hard not to see it a little.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.
