Ben Affleck Gets Into Fights With 12-Year-Olds on Fortnite. The 12-Year-Olds Are Winning

Ben Affleck went on New Heights, the podcast Travis and Jason Kelce host, in an episode that came out October 7, and said something that's been going around all weekend. He plays Fortnite. He plays it because his teenage son is obsessed with it. And when the children in the game beat him, which is often, and then make fun of him, which is always, he argues with them in the chat.

He told the Kelces he figured his years of Madden and shooting games would carry over. They did not. The kids are quick, they're merciless, and he said he ends up insisting to them that he is a grown man. He also mentioned his son wanted $300 worth of Fortnite skins for Christmas, which is the most frightening number anyone said on that podcast, and they talk to football players.

Now, I want to be fair to Mr. Affleck. He has won two Oscars, one for writing and one for producing. He's played Batman. He has stood on stages before the most powerful people in Hollywood and been handed golden statues. And there he is, at night, in his house, losing a gunfight to a sixth grader and typing back at him. There's a lesson in that about fame, and it's that fame has no effect whatsoever on a twelve-year-old.

I'll admit I relate. The only time I ever played one of these games, a child I'd never met beat me in about forty seconds and then did a little dance over me. I didn't argue. I just turned it off and went outside and stood there for a while, like a man who'd been robbed.

Affleck was promoting a new Netflix thriller, and I'm sure it's good. But nobody will remember the movie. They'll remember that a man who has been Batman told a child he was a grown man, and the child, presumably, did not care. That's the whole of childhood in one sentence: grown men keep telling you who they are, and you keep winning anyway.