Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have been one of Hollywood’s “it” couples for years, partly because of how normal they seem, despite their impossibly glamorous lives.
Rather than embracing the usual celebrity aloofness, the pair’s self-deprecating jokes and constant Instagram pranks have become a pop culture institution.
And each new iteration is always met with a resounding chorus of fans declaring their marriage “relationship goals.”
But their streak is starting to wear a little thin for some fans, who are starting to feel like the whole thing is an act — and one that has long since worn out its welcome.
In a recent thread on the “r/popculturechat” subReddit, a fan asked outright, “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 towards Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.
Many fans aren’t buying Reynolds and Lively’s “photographic” marriage, thinking it’s just another Hollywood PR stunt.
It’s easy to forget, in the face of celebrities’ carefully crafted public personas, that they are, after all, celebrity celebrities who bear no resemblance to the lives of ordinary people.
In the case of Reynolds and Lively, many feel like they are taking everything “normal” a little too far.
One Redditor called the pair “manufactured,” while another called their “lol so quirky persona” a calculated move conjured up by their PR team.
A TikTok user had a similar opinion, claiming that the constant hitting on each other is just a modern iteration of the “ball and chain” culture.
Another commenter on Reddit said that the more the couple “try to push the ideal marriage/relationship ideal online, the less I believe them.”
Fans have had it with Reynolds and Lively constantly trolling.
Reynolds and Lively’s constant social media trolling of each other has become an institution among fans.
Fans seem to especially love Reynolds’ annual roast of Lively on her birthday, like below in 2019 where he posted a series of racy photos of his wife.
But for some fans, the piece has gotten very old, very fast. One Redditor called Reynolds’ entire style “too creepy for me,” while another pointed out that his jokes are all the same, including in his movies.
The user wrote: “His humor gets really old when you realize he makes the same jokes all the time.”
“He’ll say something funny with a very straight face and then just keep staring at the person he’s saying it to.”
Another wrote that while they like Lively, they can’t stand him, and they’re especially annoyed that Reynolds’ crushes on his wife, they wrote, “come off like a chore.”
One Redditor wholeheartedly agreed, calling Lively a Reynolds troll, like a 2017 birthday post where he cut Lively out of a picture entirely, “really old.”
And then they made an unfavorable comparison to Reynolds’ comic style – “It’s kind of creepy to me like boomer humor of sorts.”
Adj. Difficult, but fair.
Still, for every person who seems to hate Reynolds and Lively, there’s another who loves them and “doesn’t get the intense hate,” as one Redditor put it.
In the end, Reynolds and Lively’s social media portrayal of the perfect, hilarious celebrity marriage isn’t hurting anyone.
But after years and years of public performance, it’s hard not to see through it.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice and human affairs.
