The rise in “manosphere” creators like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan are normalizing misogyny and other violent attitudes towards women on social media—but TikToker and comedian Matt Rife took it one step too far in his Netflix special.
The 28-year-old, who said that this comedy set for “more for guys” than women, kicked things off by recounting how he was served by a hostess with a “full black eye.”
“It wasn’t like, ‘What happened?’ It was pretty obvious what happened,” he said. “But we couldn’t get over, like, this is the face of the company? This is who you have greeting people? 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.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.'”
When audiences reacted with shock towards the comment, Rife said it was a test in order to see whether the audience was “fun” or not. “I figured we start the show with domestic violence, the rest of the show should be pretty smooth sailing,” he added. “Of course, I felt bad for her. She should have had her protection crystals, you know what I mean?”
Naturally, this joke caused a lot of backlash on social media, with many users pointing out the irony of Rife making sexist jokes when his fanbase is mostly women.
One critic of Rife was TikToker Buffy Summers (@Buffysummers1997), whose video responding to Rife’s tasteless joke is viral on the app.
@buffysummers1997 Also he may be hot in person and on video, but in photos he looks HORRIFYING #mattrife #netflix #fy ♬ original sound – BuffySummers1997
“Matt Rife is not funny, and solely got famous recently because he’s good looking,” she explained. “And he hates this fact and hates that he has a majority female audience because they only want to look at him. Rightfully so, because he has nothing to say the domestic violence joke at the beginning of his new special was hack and terrible.”
She then went on to point out the irony of Rife saying he didn’t want to “pander to” women anymore “as if making a domestic violence joke about women isn’t directly pandering to men.”
“Matt Rife constantly goes on podcasts and on these long rants about how he’s not famous because he’s good looking because he spent years working in the industry,” she added. “Yeah, you spent years working hard and you barely had shit until you got good looking. I encourage him to continue to try to alienate his female audience because he’ll really realize how little anybody cares about what he has to say.”
She concluded: “Also, directly to Matt, no one believes you don’t have a chin implant.”
Based on the reaction to Rife’s joke on Twitter, its clear Summers is far from the only person who feels like this. One user remarked it was “crazy” how “women catapulted Matt Rife into popularity, and the second he gets a special on Netflix he betrays them with a joke about domestic violence.”
“Pretty privelage can’t excuse his jokes for much longer,” another user added, while a third simply responded to the joke by saying “big yikes.”
The Daily Dot’s reached out to Summers for comment via TikTok comment and Rife via representative for comment.