What drove the Blake Lively backlash? New data and unsealed court docs offer clues Gudea, a behavioral-intelligence company, shared exclusive data with NBC News that found “inauthentic engagement around” the “It Ends With Us” star on social media in August 2024.
Okay, I’m not gonna lie, reading this article felt VERY validating as someone who was pro-Blake from the beginning.
For months, people like me were called “delusional” for questioning how fast and aggressively the anti-Blake narrative exploded online. But this NBC piece basically lays out why so many of us felt like something about the backlash didn’t feel organic.
According to data shared with NBC, nearly 16% of the social media conversation about Blake came from just 2.93% of accounts posting repetitive content at unusually high volume. The article also references unsealed court docs allegedly showing discussions about boosting negative Blake content online including the “little bump” interview clip that suddenly became unavoidable across TikTok, Reddit, X, Instagram, literally everywhere.
And honestly… this proves what myself and a lot of Blake supporters were saying the entire time:
- the same exact talking points kept repeating everywhere
- old interviews resurfaced all at once
- people suddenly acted like hating Blake was some universal consensus
- the pile-on escalated way too fast to feel fully natural
What really got me was the court docs allegedly mentioning plans to leverage platforms like Reddit, Discord, TikTok, X, Instagram and YouTube to influence conversations “in real time.” Because that is EXACTLY what it felt like watching this play out online in 2024 and still TODAY!
At minimum, this article makes it really hard to keep pretending the backlash was just “everyone independently realizing Blake was awful” overnight. A lot of people saw the weirdness in real time and now there’s actual reporting, data, and court documents backing up why they felt that way.