What the Internet Missed About Blake Lively in It Ends With Us

Watching It Ends with Us, I found myself thinking less about the film itself and more about the intense public reaction surrounding Blake Lively. As a psychotherapist and artist, I was struck not only by her performance but by the cruelty directed toward her online during the film’s release.

The internet often frames public backlash as righteous accountability, but psychologically, I believe many online “hate trains” are far more complicated than people would like to admit. The satirical videos, mockery, assumptions about her personal life, and relentless criticism felt emotionally charged in a way that extended beyond critique of a press tour or acting performance. Beneath some of the discourse, I sensed projection, envy, moral superiority, and the human tendency to turn public figures into emotional punching bags.

What fascinated me most was how quickly people reduced her to a stereotype: the privileged, wealthy, conventionally attractive white woman incapable of understanding pain. Yet pain does not discriminate according to beauty, fame, class, or public image. In fact, one of the dangers of privilege discourse online is that we sometimes begin constructing unconscious hierarchies around who is “allowed” to suffer and whose pain feels believable.

Years ago, when my sister first introduced me to Gossip Girl, I remember immediately interpreting the series differently than many viewers around me. While audiences often consumed it as glamorous escapism, I saw much of it as satire. Serena van der Woodsen, the character played by Lively, was not emotionally stable or aspirational in the traditional sense. She was often chaotic, lonely, publicly humiliated, triangulated, emotionally overwhelmed, and socially crucified despite her beauty and status. Underneath the designer clothes and Upper East Side fantasy was a recurring portrait of distress.

I experienced something similar watching The Age of Adaline. Beneath the elegance and beauty of the character was sorrow, emotional isolation, and grief. As both a therapist and performer, I have long believed that actors are often drawn toward emotional material that resonates with something psychologically familiar to them. This does not mean audiences should speculate recklessly about a celebrity’s private life. However, I do think emotionally attuned viewers can sometimes sense when a performance contains genuine emotional understanding rather than simply technical acting.

This is partly why I found the reaction to Lively during the promotion of It Ends With Us unsettling. Many viewers interpreted her shifts toward fashion, humor, or lighter topics during interviews as evidence that she did not care about domestic violence. I interpreted some of those moments differently. Psychologically, people often cope with emotionally overwhelming subjects through compartmentalization, emotional redirection, performance, beauty rituals, humor, or avoidance. Glamour itself can sometimes function as emotional armor.

As therapists know, survivors of violence do not always present in ways the public expects. Society often wants pain to appear coherent, visibly devastated, politically articulate, and emotionally consumable. We are more comfortable when people provide us with clear narratives, tears, confessions, and public vulnerability. Yet many people survive difficult experiences by maintaining composure, focusing on aesthetics, redirecting attention, or performing normalcy. Unfortunately, when someone does not perform suffering in the “correct” way, audiences can become suspicious or cruel.

Ironically, if it were publicly revealed tomorrow that a celebrity people mocked had experienced abuse or trauma, many of the same individuals participating in online ridicule would likely produce emotional apology videos expressing compassion and regret. This says something profound about modern internet culture. Increasingly, empathy is granted retroactively, only after suffering becomes undeniable.

I have become deeply cautious of public mobbing, even when it presents itself as activism or moral concern. Having personally experienced public and institutional backlash myself, I know firsthand how quickly groups can become psychologically consumed by certainty, projection, and collective punishment while convincing themselves they are acting morally. Emotionally charged topics such as domestic violence can easily become containers into which people project their own pain, insecurity, resentment, envy, or unresolved anger. Online communities can provide a temporary sense of belonging and moral cleansing, but they can also encourage psychological recklessness. Once a public figure becomes dehumanized, empathy rapidly disappears.

Perhaps what disturbed me most about the backlash surrounding Blake Lively was not whether every interview was perfectly handled, but how quickly audiences abandoned complexity altogether. The internet demanded a perfect victim, a perfect advocate, and a perfectly curated public grief narrative. Anything less became grounds for ridicule.

As a psychotherapist, I often think about how dangerous it becomes when we lose the ability to tolerate emotional ambiguity. Human beings are complicated. Trauma is complicated. Coping is complicated. And sometimes the people who appear the most polished, glamorous, privileged, or emotionally composed are carrying realities we cannot immediately see.

Perhaps the deeper question is not whether Blake Lively handled every public moment correctly. Perhaps the more important question is why modern audiences seem so eager to punish people before fully recognizing their humanity.