Maybe you’ve heard of Matt Rife, maybe you haven’t. Up until a week ago, he was largely popular among young women and girls, via TikTok. After going viral in 2021, he became an internet crush for thousands. The viral video in question was a clip from a standup show where he roasted an audience member who broke up with her boyfriend, an emergency room worker, to which Rife said: “Oh, I’m sorry – you broke up with a hero?” Now, he has a Netflix special titled Natural Selection.
‘Crowd work’ with women, often with sexual or flirty undertones, became his modus operandi. It is women, after all, who predominantly attend his shows. Many cite his ‘hotness’ for making him popular, as much as his comedic timing.
Another popular video, titled ‘Cookies & MILF’, shows him interacting with a fan called Christina, who is wearing an “I came to Iowa and all I got was this T-shirt and a blowjob” shirt – and gives him homemade cookies. He eats one on stage, calls her hot and jokes: “Listen guys, I’ve never ended a show early before.” At the time of writing this, he has 18.2M followers on TikTok.
His ascent to a Netflix special isn’t that of a typical comic; he isn’t a household name, and it has been released before his (sold-out) world tour ends. But, the streaming giants were clearly tapping into his huge fanbase. Consisting of, let me say again, mostly women.
It’s strange then, that in an interview with Variety he said: “I don’t pander my career to women. I would argue this special is way more for guys.” The phrase ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ springs to mind.
In the same interview, the Ohio native said, “I don’t really adhere to this whole sensitivity rumour in the comedy world that you can’t say anything anymore. That’s bullshit. You can say whatever you want. Now, you have to prepare for repercussions. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to how do you sleep at night. You know what I mean?” So, let’s get into some of those repercussions, shall we?
Rife begins his hour-long set, which was filmed in Washington DC, with a joke that uses domestic violence as its punchline. The anecdote is set at a restaurant in “ratchet” Baltimore, where he says, “The hostess who seats you had a black eye. A full black eye. It wasn’t like, ‘What happened?’ It was pretty obvious what happened,” he continued. “But we couldn’t get over, like, this is the face of the company? This is who you have greeting people?”
The bit continues, “And my boy, who I was with, was like, ‘Yeah, I feel bad for her, man, I feel like they should put her in the kitchen or something where nobody has to see her face,’” Rife says. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.’”
