Natural Selection backlash, conclusion
Viewers at home were non-too-impressed.
“The way women catapulted Matt Rife into popularity and the second he gets a comedy special on Netflix he immediately betrays them with a joke about domestic violence crazy innit," wrote one X user.
“Not Matt Rife building his platform on catering to his female audience and then opening his Netflix special with a domestic violence joke,” another comment read.
“The girls and gays were Matt Rife‘s biggest demographic and he used his Netflix special to pander to toxic masculinity,” another person wrote.
“It feels like a betrayal.”
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or chat at thehotline.org.
Natural Selection backlash, continued
"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 recounted.
While this content was already enough to have some fans questioning his direction, it was the punchline that has earned Rife the labels of sexist and misogynist by ex-fans.
"And I was like, 'Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn't have that black eye,’" dropped Rife.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or chat at thehotline.org.
Natural Selection backlash
In his new Netflix Special Natural Selection, Rife elected to kick off his show with content surrounding domestic violence.
"If we start the show with domestic violence. The rest of the show should be pretty smooth sailing after that," Rife reasoned to the audience after delivering the opening joke.
The setup was that he and a friend were eating at a diner in “ratchet” Baltimore, Maryland while being sat by a hostess with a black eye.
"A full black eye. It wasn't like, 'What happened?' It was pretty obvious what happened,” he told the audience.
“But we couldn't get over, like, this is the face of the company? This is who you have greeting people?" he continued.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or chat at thehotline.org.
What to know about Matt Rife
Matthew Steven Rife is a comedian born on September 10, 1995, in Columbus, Ohio.
Rife made his debut as a comedian in 2021 when he released his self-produced comedy special Only Fans.
Two years later, on February 14, 2023, Rife released another comedy special under his full name.
A third special, Natural Selection, was released in November and has drawn criticism after making a joke about domestic violence.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or chat at thehotline.org.
New dates added
Matt Rife took to X, formerly Twitter, on December 13 to announce that he has added several new dates to his ProbleMATTic World Tour.
The new dates include additional stops in Connecticut, Nevada, California, Colorado, and New Jersey.
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