People on the internet went wild after TikToker Nivine Jay shared her experience matching with actor Ben Affleck, who was recently linked to actor Ana de Armas.
Jay and Affleck met on the exclusive dating app Raya and afterward, Jay spilled all of the beans about their encounter in a TikTok video. Since then, her video has been heavily shared across social media channels — gaining viral popularity on Twitter.
Roughly 24 hours after the video began circulating, the topic is still trending on Twitter with over 19.9K tweets. Here’s everything we know about the situation and Raya, as well as some top-tier commentary from others.
Nivine Jay unmatched Ben Affleck
Nivine Jay is a popular TikToker with 23.9K followers on the app and 474.4 likes. She posts comedic videos on the platform, playing into the self-deprecating sense of humor that is widely popular among Gen-Zers. On her account, she posts videos talking about astrology, fashion, and girl friendship groups — as well as ones about her Lebanese heritage and her general experience with men.
In her more recent TikTok, she revealed that she had matched with Ben Affleck on the celebrity-exclusive dating platform Raya. In her video, she writes, “Thinking of the time I matched with Ben Affleck on Raya and thought it was fake and he sent me a video on Instagram.”
After the text disappears, the aforementioned Instagram video appears and reveals Affleck saying to the camera, “Nivine, why did you unmatch me? It’s me.”
What is Raya?
The interaction occurred on the dating app Raya, a membership-only app that was built for people in the entertainment industry. The app is meant to be very secretive in order to protect the identities of the celebrities on the app and keep them from the public eye. This makes Nivine Jay’s video a shock.
According to The New York Times, Raya only accepts about 8 percent of its applicants. Columnist Kevin Roose wrote, “Prospective members are evaluated by an algorithm and human gatekeepers, who consider factors like the size of an applicant’s Instagram following, how many Raya members he or she knows and other, less quantifiable attributes.”
Members of the app are supposed to abide by “strict privacy” rules and refrain from screenshotting or disclosing information from other users on the app — meaning this is quite an awkward situation for Affleck who decided to reach out to Jay outside of Raya and on her Instagram account.
What are people saying?
The top tweet about this situation comes from Twitter user Jess White. Sharing the video onto Twitter, she wrote, “Obsessed with Ben Affleck as a concept.” As of the time of writing, the tweet has 12.9K retweets and 119.2K likes.
Writer Hunter Harris also chimed in. Summarizing the situation in under 280 characters the best, she tweeted, “Ben Affleck reclaimed his title as the Most Divorced Man in Hollywood, I see.”
Nicole Byer, the hilarious host of Netflix’s Nailed It, added to the conversation. She wrote, “I need Ben Affleck on my podcast Why Won’t You Date Me? We can do an episode called Why Did You Unmatch Me.” That appears to be a popular pitch as her tweet currently has 10.9K likes.
Who knows, maybe Nivine Jay and Ben Affleck will be brought back together due to the comedic value of the situation — if Affleck isn’t too embarrassed by this big reveal.