PHOTO CREDIT: Clément Proust.
INVEST IN A time machine, travel back to 2023 and warn the fans who were pissed off about his controversial comedy special Natural Selection to do their research ahead of time. Easy.
If you don’t know who Matt Rife is, you may have seemingly wandered into his recent Netflix comedy special, sat your arse down in the auditorium, and watched the show regardless. I am fucked if I know how you got past security.
Here’s a refresher on the Matt Rife controversy for those who don’t remember:
Matt Rife responded to the backlash with the following statement:
“One thing that I wanted to tackle in this special was showing people that despite what you think about me online, I don’t pander my career to women. I would argue this special is way more for guys.”
Matt Rife.
If you’re not familiar with Matt Rife, he’s been on the comedy scene for about a decade and rose to fame on TikTok on the back of clips of his crowd work, and being a good-looking guy and, as a result, quickly accumulated a legion of female fans despite employing what one would call “frat humour.” You would think that would have come up at some point, but apparently, it went unaddressed for some time.
I’m not here to defend the joke or to condemn it. Whether the joke was offensive or not is not what I take offence to. Here’s my issue:
What kind of absolute dum-dum becomes a full-blown stan for a comedian, enough to pay money to go to their show sight unseen (or the auditory equivalent), on the basis that “he’s dreamy”, having not even been arsed to have actually heard any of his shit.
Or, having heard his material, not even listening to a God damned word that was coming out of his mouth the whole time. Maybe if they’d opened their ears as well as their eyes beforehand, they could have saved themselves the ticket money, and the dude would still have a job. I’d call it Darwinism, but the only person being eliminated here via Natural Selection is Matt Rife.
Again, I’m not defending the joke. He could have left it out. He certainly would have been better off. But for fuck’s sake, you were offended. That’s all. You’ll live. Trust me on this. Being offended continues to maintain a zero per cent mortality rate.
If you were sober enough to acquaint yourselves with his material rather than just his jawline, tuned in to the special or paid money to go to the gig, and found his joke to be way beyond the pale, then that’s your right as a consumer.
But, if you’re going to attend a random comedian’s show on the halo effect alone just to stare at the son of a bitch, or expect him to have the telepathic ability to parrot your unrealistic, uninformed expectations back to you, only to be salty and indignant that he couldn’t give a shit about those expectations, and was there to tell the jokes that were written, get paid, then bounce; that’s on you. No refunds.
I mean, what did you expect from a guy who was on MTV’s Wild N’ Out? That he was going to shower you with rose petals, make a bunch of hackneyed pseudo-jokes about Ben & Jerry’s and fear of commitment, then end the show early so he can have a cry?
Then take everyone out for Ben & Jerry’s after the show, so he can sit there and listen intently to you bang on incessantly about your problems while you all braid each other’s hair? Then throw an impromptu slumber party before you all get up early to go skip through a meadow and pick daffodils?
Fuck off.
What other stupid shit are you in the habit of doing? Do you just put your hands over your eyes for whatever reason and randomly walk across the street into oncoming traffic, then meander your way into whatever empty void most resembles a doorway, sit your arse down and order a pumpkin spice latte? Only to leave a snarky Yelp review over failure to deliver on the aforementioned latte? Only to find out later on that it wasn’t a coffee shop at all, but some old lady’s house?
And instead of actually registering your complaint on Yelp, due to your eyes still being covered, it turned out to be the Crimestoppers website? And now you’re up for a bid on home invasion charges? And now you want to sue the police for wrongful arrest?
What was I on about? Something about Bob Saget? I forgot.
G. Billington Evans is a satirical writer, visual artist, and the owner of THEARTOFGEVANS.COM.
Certain materials are included under the fair use exemption of the US Copyright Act and are restricted from further use.
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