Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
TikTok heartthrob Matt Rife is facing backlash following the debut of his first Netflix special Natural Selection. The aptly-named show became a kind of screening process for his fans’ tolerance, opening with a domestic violence joke that has left a bad taste in viewers’ mouths. Despite building an intensely loyal, mostly-female, fanbase Rife took the opportunity to mock not only abuse against women but to reinforce stereotypes that those women belong in the kitchen.
Rife opens the hour by talking about a recent experience at a Baltimore restaurant in which his female server had a black eye. He suggests that the restaurant should have made her work in the kitchen rather than a customer-facing role before saying, “Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.”
The painful irony is that Rife has relied on female audiences throughout most of his comedy career and now that his jokes are punching down at the very people supporting him, he’s facing a fall from the heights of TikTok fame. Rife first began gaining traction after uploading crowd work videos to TikTok and has seemingly never shaken off the embarrassment that comes with being a glorified influencer.