Matt Rife ‘Apologizes’ for Offensive Domestic Violence Jokes With Link to Special-Needs Helmet Store
You can’t say Matt Rife didn’t warn us. In his new Netflix special, Natural Selection (currently rocking a 17 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes), he confesses that he is “a very defensive person, apparently.” On the one hand, Rife says you can criticize him all you want. “Ultimately, that stuff never bothers me,” he says near the end of Natural Selection. “You’re never gonna hurt my feelings.”
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But the rest of the special contradicts those denials. Despite online criticism never hurting his feelings, Rife says he has “a very quick trigger reaction to feel the need to defend myself if I feel like somebody is coming at me. And I go for the kill every time.” Talk your shit all you want, the comic says. But just know, “I’m gonna fuck you up verbally, dude. My goal is to now make you cry.”
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Totally normal stuff. Nothing to see here.
Now that the special has dropped, some online commenters have been talking their shit.
It seems some comedy fans don’t like jokes about domestic violence. And Matt Rife doesn’t like people who criticize comics who make jokes about domestic violence. On his Instagram Story yesterday, he offered an “official apology” to the haters:
https://www.instagram.com/mattrife/
The link to “solve your issue” is the special-needs helmet section of medicaleshop.com, a site that’s probably receiving an unexpected boost in web traffic today. Rife’s message is unmistakable — you’re offended by one (or more) of his jokes? Then you need one of these, sweetheart.
medicaleshop.com
If it’s attention Matt Rife is after (and attention-seeking may very well be behind the noise), he’s got it.
It all sounds like a very bad career move, until you head to Netflix and see that Natural Selection is sitting at #2 on its Top Ten charts. (It was #1 at the time he posted his Insta story.) Like a professional wrestler who does a heel turn, Rife might be proving that acting like a jerk is good for business after all.