We might just be watching TikTok comedian Matt Rife‘s fall from grace in real-time. After copping an intense amount of backlash for misogynistic jokes about domestic violence from his latest comedy special, Rife has clapped back with a fake apology making viewers even more furious.
In case you’re not familiar with Rife, he’s a pretty big deal on social media. He built a following of more than 18.2M on TikTok during the pandemic, with a huge portion of his fan base made up of women. He was applauded for his witty crowd work at shows and specifically his flirty banter with gals in the crowd. Using his online fan base as a jumping-off point, he kicked off a solid comedy career touring around the United States.
On November 15, Rife released a Netflix comedy special entitled Natural Selection. He kicked off his set with a joke set in a “rachet” restaurant, explaining how the woman serving him had a black eye. Walking from one side of the stage to the other, Rife tells the audience that one of his pals turned to him, exclaiming that she should be moved into the kitchen instead of serving people in her condition.
“Yeah but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye,” Rife said in return, before saying he’d said the joke first up to test the audience to “see if they’re going to be fun or not”.
As my editor so aptly said when I pitched this story — kudos to Rife if he could make the very-tired and overused ‘woman in the kitchen’ joke funny. Unfortunately, for the majority of viewers watching the special at home, making a misogynistic joke about domestic violence didn’t really hit.
Instead, it sparked a heap of discourse around the joke with fans calling for an apology.
The onslaught against Rife’s comments was so intense that TikTok’s feminist warrior Drew Afualo was summoned by the masses to take him down. Which is no easy feat these days, she’s a busy gal.
Sadly for Rife, the special was also panned by a range of reviewers, including this particular burn from Vulture after he made a fat-phobic joke about a woman who negatively commented on his content:
“This, at least, is shaped like a joke, but the rest of it notably lacks the kind of humorous reframing or conscious construction that would make any of it into material.”
Ouchie mama, to say the least.
On November 20, Rife took to his Instagram Stories to comment on the backlash.
“If you’ve ever been offended by a joke I’ve told, here’s a link to my official apology,” he wrote.
But instead of linking out to an apology, it was a link to a website which sold special needs helmets.
As you’d expect, this pissed people off even more.
In a previous interview with Variety, Rife commented on the claims that his fanbase is predominantly women. And, honestly, it seems like this was an issue for him.
“One of the biggest misconceptions of things I get ridiculed online for is people are like ‘oh, he only has a female fan base,’” Rife said.
“In the beginning yes, because I did blow up on TikTok which is very female dominant…So, I get that perspective. But when you come to the shows, I mean, it’s 50/50. It’s couples coming out. It’s groups of dudes who are coming.
“And that’s one thing that I wanted to tackle in this special was showing people that like despite what you think about me online, I don’t pander my career to women.”
In Natural Selection, he sure as hell doesn’t pander to women.
In fact, it’s almost like he’s attempted to step away from an audience comprised of gals entirely, with jokes that make fun of domestic violence and no sign of the crowd work that he’d become famous for.
While it’s easy to dismiss his comments as just a joke from a comedian and tell Rife’s haters to “lighten up”, domestic violence is painfully real for women. As of November 17 2023, 49 women have been killed as a result of violence, with 28 allegedly killed by a male partner according to Counting Dead Women Australia.
Until these terrifying statistics begin to decrease, please excuse me if I don’t have a cheeky giggle at jokes that make light of domestic violence.
If Matt Rife wants to be another white, misogynistic male comedian he can be my fkn guest. But he’ll definitely have a lot more competition in that space than he would if he was the witty, charming comedian who women loved.
