👉 Okay, settle in closely, class. Let’s tackle this… rather prickly little piece of late-aughts/early teens internet vernacular: Afflecka. (You guys hear that right? Afflecka. It's a mouthful, frankly.)
Now, Afflecka is a spectacularly obnoxious and aggressively specific brand of insult. Historically, it originated within the somewhat bizarre corners of early 2013 Tumblr and early Vine where there was an… intense… obsession with what was essentially the face, specifically, the face that belonged to Blake Affleck – who you may recall as one of Ashton Kutcher’s then-boyfriends. Affleck himself is a handsome dude, I won't lie, but for this insult, he became a horrifyingly detailed, instantly recognisable punchline. Basically, saying someone looks like Afflecka meant your assessment of their face was so profoundly and fundamentally awful that it somehow resembled the physical embodiment of Blake Affleck. It wasn’t just “you look weird. You look…off. Afflecka. 5/10 for bone structure.” There's a level of pointed, almost surgical disappointment attached to the word. The humour (and, frankly, the considerable pettiness) lay in this complete deflation of somebody's face into a single, pathetic reference point. Affleck himself was reportedly not amused. He sued Afflecka, then Affleck’t. You have to admit it was a very specific and rather dramatic way of
