Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 21, 2023
I had no idea who Matt Rife was until last week when his latest stand-up special repeatedly appeared on my Netflix account. Out of curiosity, I clicked play. Within the first three minutes, he told a domestic violence joke. He jokes about a hostess with a black eye and how the restaurant should have stashed her in the kitchen so no one would have to see her face, but if she could cook, she probably wouldn’t have had the black eye in the first place.
“Testing the waters, seeing if y’all can be fun or not,” Rife laughs after telling the joke. That was three minutes and five seconds into the special. That’s as far as I made it. I guess I’m not very fun.
I didn’t think too much of it because I’d never heard of Matt Rife, and I assumed that no one else had either. I was wrong. He’s very popular on TikTok, where Osama Bin Laden is also popular. Rife cites his biggest influences as Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. That tracks.
As one might imagine, the domestic violence joke elicited backlash from people who, I assume, represent the majority of Americans in that they don’t think domestic violence jokes are funny. I’d cite one of what I’m sure are hundreds of tweets, but I try to stay away from Twitter because it’s overrun with people like Matt Rife.
The backlash, however, did elicit an apology. On his Instagram page, he wrote, “If you’ve ever been offended by a joke I’ve told, here’s a link to my official apology.” The link led to a page where one could buy special needs helmets from Medicaleshop.
Classy.
Netflix can use the largest streaming platform in the world to pay and promote whoever they want, and Netflix users can watch whatever the hell they want to watch. It’s a free country (for now). But before any of our readers decide to click play because Netflix is algorithmically berating them to do so, it’s important to know that Matt Rife is a piece of sh**. We as a society survived Dane Cook; we don’t need to go through that again.
