This Week in Gossip #27

Trouble in Paradise for Bennifer, Chat GPT vs. ScarJo, and the End of a Fashion Era

Welcome back to This Week in Gossip. My apologies for the lack of a post last week. I was on holiday in Madrid (gorgeous city, amazing museums, top weather, 10/10.) We’re back in business with a lot of news.

1. People Mag Confirms It: Bennifer Are In Trouble

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s marriage was one of those moments in pop culture history that inspired almost exclusively positive reactions from the world. Who doesn’t love a second chance at love, and the narrative of two hot celebrities who found one another almost two decades after they cancelled their wedding? We were hungry for the return of Bennifer, and it made us all kind of hopeful that this marriage would go the distance. Lopez was so enamoured with her new-old love that she made a very strange concept album and movie about it (which she self-financed!) Now, however, we’re getting the rumblings of trouble in paradise.

First, InTouch claimed they were facing issues, then People wrote an exclusive with a “source” saying the pair were living separately. Very shortly after this story, the pair attended an event together in support of their kids. People says this was the first time they were seen together in 47 days. Lopez also liked an Instagram post about spotting red flags in relationships, so of course things got wilder. Then, Affleck was photographed in public with his wedding ring on show.

For those who need a quick refresher: There are certain gossip magazines you can reasonably trust with their information and ones you can outright dismiss. People and Us Weekly are generally considered to be the top tier mags, the ones that publicists will rely on to get their narrative out. If you had seen, for example, a “source” in People claiming that Hailey Bieber was pregnant before she made the official announcement herself, you could securely say that story was true. If it was in InTouch, on the other hand, you’d be more sceptical. That’s not to say that a broken clock can’t be right twice a day. Remember, InTouch was the magazine to break the story about the Josh Duggar familial abuse scandal. They do have boots-on-the-ground investigators who know their stuff, but most gossip mags don’t engage in that kind of work. They’re for fluff and story management.

And they’re still widely accepted as the truth by general readers who aren’t cognisant of the industry’s labour (or, at the very least, believable.) It’s why I can’t help but want to tear my hair out when I see Brad Pitt’s “sources” using these methods: because a hell of a lot of people swallow it wholesale because it’s packaged well by the likes of People and Us Weekly. Yes, a lot of celebrities prefer to get their message out there sans middleman via stuff like social media, but there’s a reason you still see those “sources” in the magazines.

So, with People talking about Bennifer having “troubles”, I think we can safely say that Lopez and Affleck and trying to get ahead of any other potential stories out there. How did InTouch get this first? Could have been a lucky guess. I’m pretty sure some celebrities get “their marriage is in trouble” stories every week for years on end. But it also could have been a leak from Bennifer’s camp, or maybe one from People’s office. These stories are money, after all. Bennifer was the biggest and most extensively covered celeb romance of the early 2000s, to the point where it faced intense backlash that put a dent in Affleck’s career for a couple of years (that and some poor career choices.) Stuff like this is the bread and butter of People and company. They want the gravy train to continue, but it has to remain a mutually beneficial relationship with the industry they’re covering. Rock the boat too much and you’ll lose all those exclusives.

I try not to invest too much in celeb romances for obvious reasons, but dang it, I am kind of rooting for these crazy kids. The odds are not in their favour and I want them to overcome the noise. Love is a nice thing but so is the sheer glossy narrative of it in the context of celebrity (that’s my bread and butter.)