Matt Rife defends past controversy (again) as new special Lucid lands on Netflix

By Abby Amoakuh

Updated Aug 22, 2024 at 11:11 AM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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Image courtesy of Netflix

Netflix just premiered its first-ever crowd work comedy special on Tuesday 13 August 2024 starring the incomparable, drumroll please, Matt Rife. Yup, that’s right. After his contested 2023 special Natural Selection which was despised by critics and audiences alike due to a slew of misogynistic jokes, Netflix invited the infamous comedian back for round two.

And this time around, Rife still wasn’t ready to apologise for his jokes about domestic violence that stirred up extensive backlash. Instead, he recommended that victims should laugh at themselves more…

Rife’s new special Lucid saw the comedian return to what he does best and what offered his initial claim to fame: crowd work. For roughly 50 minutes, an audience in Charlotte, Michigan, feeds Rife details of their lives, giving the comedian setups he uses to counter with zingers.

The stand-up special offers a gentle reminder of a time when the TikTok comedian wasn’t considered, well, an unfunny incel.

Nevertheless, Rife hasn’t broken with his controversial debut Natural Selection. Instead, he defended the special in a recent interview with The New Yorker, saying that he thought of his jokes as a way for survivors to heal.

In case you forgot, Rife famously joked at the beginning of his previous special about a waitress at a restaurant who had a black eye: “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.’”

If you didn’t laugh and found this quite offensive, you and the rest of the internet have something in common. Yet, Rife still seems quite unbothered by that criticism.

“Whether it’s depression or a physical disability, not everyone wants to be seen as a victim,” he said in the recent profile, claiming that hundreds of victims of domestic violence had reached out to support him in the aftermath of his joke controversy. Okay, if you say so.

“They also want to laugh at themselves,” he continued. “Sometimes people need to laugh to heal through the things that make them uncomfortable.”

The Netflix comedian also revealed some advice he received from fellow divisive comedian Dave Chapelle following the backlash.

“Even when the world turned against me after the special, Chappelle was like, ‘Don’t f*ckin’ give in. It doesn’t matter what you do,’ ” Rife said. “‘If you apologise, you still lost.’”

This might explain why Rife didn’t apologise for the controversy. Instead, he doubled down with an Instagram Story aimed at those offended by the joke that linked a fake apology note to a website selling special needs helmets. Classy.

This, of course, led to the question of why Rife had even received a new special from Netflix after his first one generated so much backlash. The answer might be that the controversy still generated a lot of attention and views for the streaming giant, even if for all the wrong reasons.

Of course, there were still a lot of netizens who enjoyed his new work.

It looks like Rife was able to move away from the shadows of his countless controversies and into a new spotlight on Netflix. We’ll keep you posted about how that goes.