Matt Rife: He just isn’t that funny.
Photo Courtesy of Nexflix
Settling down on an unassuming Friday night, myself and my three female flatmates curled up on the sofa to watch Matt Rife’s new Netflix special ‘Natural Selection’. Ten minutes in, our eyes were rolling with incredulity.
“He’s just not… funny? Can I say that?” Josie asks.
“This guy, honestly. Who does he think this appeals to?” Rikki adds, with a sense of ire.
“What the hell!” Mimi adds.
They have a point. We all don’t like him. And granted, you don’t have to like him. Comedy is subjective. But the very fact that Rife has been given a platform by Netflix, and released something so openly unfunny (in our astute opinion), merits some discussion.
Rife, originally from Ohio, says he has been working hard for years: at 28 years old, he has been working the LA comedy circuit for over a decade. His big break came with social media- his crowd work videos gained thousands of views and made him a “TikTok comedian” almost overnight.
Upon watching these videos, you’d be forgiven for assuming the guy is in fact funny. He works well with the crowd, offering bitty remarks and comments that seek to entertain, and in the moment, they do. But on closer inspection his jokes lack depth, are superficial, and quite frankly, immature. But you’d be hard-pressed to assume that Rife is not funny, given the Netflix special has remained in the top ten for two weeks since its release on 15th November.
Alas, the opening joke of ‘Natural Selection’ fails, miserably, and the rest of the special does not offer much salvation. He starts by recounting a story of a waitress in Baltimore, which he finishes with “I feel like if she could cook then she wouldn’t have a black eye”. Not only does Rife begin with a domestic violence joke and enforce harmful gender stereotypes, he simultaneously succeeds in alienating his female audience by being, quite simply, unfunny.
He follows up on his domestic violence joke by saying “testing the water, seeing if y’all are going to be fun or not”. Therein lies the problem: his jokes are trying to offend, but at what point does this work successfully, and at what point does it become an unnecessary tirade at the expense of women? And if someone does take offence, does that make them not fun?
Misogyny in comedy is a culture that continues to be cultivated. Russell Brand and Louis C.K are prime examples of male comedians who in recent years have been accused of sexual assault, harassment and rape. This again points to a bigger problem of Rife’s comedy: jokes against women only further perpetuate misogyny within the realms of comedy, and cultivate an environment that enables toxic behaviour exemplified by Brand and C.K.
Given that the majority of his following is female, as Rife himself attests, it also begs the question: why did he start off with a joke about domestic violence? Perhaps more worryingly, who finds it funny? Some commentators point to the explanation that the misogyny in his comedy has been dismissed due to his (objective) good looks. Rife himself has said he wants to disassociate from his female audience: in an interview with Variety, he argued that he “wanted to make this special for everybody. It’s not for a specific demographic … I don’t pander my career to women. I would argue this special is way more for guys.” That men are expected to like this kind of humour that takes constant aim at vulnerable groups, and that Rife purposely aimed the special for the approval of men specifically, is concerning and upsetting.
The rest of the special is predictable and laboured: Rife talks about every possible topic that may offend: porn, school shootings, disabilities and the KKK are all covered. Jokes predated on the male anatomy and masturbation (unfortunately) take up a long chunk of the special and only reaffirm Rife’s immaturity. A long (and tired) tirade on protection crystals has him say “I’m so tired of you ladies blaming your poor-decision making skills on planets that don’t even know you”. On segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, he makes a joke about someone “[f*cking] Rosa Parks in the front of the bus”. It is truly frustrating to see that women (and other demographics that stray from straight, white alpha male type that Rife epitomises) continue to be the constant target of his jokes.
The last ten minutes offer some kind of minor redemption: he dissects the objectivity of comedy and reasserts that he does not care about any backlash he might receive: “I’m just doing what I think is funny, and all I can hope to come from that is that it makes other people smile, and it makes them happy.” He has a point – what does it matter to him if the audience is offended? Comedy is supposed to entertain. If you don’t like him, you don’t have to. Regardless, this does not detract from the fact that somehow, Rife has auspiciously built a platform predating on supposedly being funny when in actual fact, he just… isn’t.
Ricky Gervais, think of him what you will, sums it up succinctly in his own Netflix special ‘Humanity’: “Your friends, your family, they’re the funniest people in the world. You meet these people and you think, ‘God, they should be on television!’ And then you realise they’re just normal.”
My flatmates and I shut down the laptop not even 20 minutes in. As I watch the rest of it on my own in bed, I wonder whether people truly do find him funny. I, for one, do not. Perhaps the lesson from Rife’s special is that not every TikTok comedian that comes up on your feed is actually funny. And that’s okay to acknowledge. The backlash he has received indicates that people, for the most part, are also not okay with rampant misogyny in comedy. And thank god for that.