The Completely Necessary Deep Dive on Matt Rife’s Dental Work

Last week, controversial comedian Matt Rife was the target of the internet’s every plastic surgery investigator after a TikTok doctor seemingly insinuated that he crafted Rife’s iconic jawline – now, the dental detectives are coming for Rife’s chompers.

Just a month ago, Rife was the shining, chiseled face of TikTok comedy breaking into the mainstream. Today, Rife’s incensed and obsessively online former fans are furious at their fallen figurehead, and TikTok, Twitter and the rest of the internet is full of denigrating dissections of that same infamous face. Rife has flatly denied assertions that his dramatic facial transformation, which has been the subject of many viral videos with seven-figure view counts, was due to any artificial facial sculpting, instead claiming that he was a fashionably late bloomer who didn’t finish puberty until the age of 23. 

While the internet’s many aestheticians, cosmetic surgeons endocrinology influencers continue to craft theories about Rifes cheekbones and chiseled jaw, other investigators are going deeper into face that launched a thousand shitposts – some commentators are now claiming that Rife’s impossibly perfect teeth are the result of intensive medical intervention and not just regimented brushing and flossing. This time, the evidence is overwhelmingly damning – he literally told us he got veneers. 

The conversation surrounding Rife’s appearance was already annoying when the impression of the greater internet community was positive in regards to Rife’s rugged handsomeness – now that he is TikTok’s public enemy #1, the platform’s signature overanalyzing and out-of-ass-talking only grows more inane. The internet likes a villain with physical flaws – like Trump and his orange skin, or Trump and his weird hair, or Trump and his small hands – but they love bringing a seemingly superior specimen back down to their level even more. As a result, Rife’s situation is a perfect storm for superficial slander.

Of course, the obsession with Rife’s face wouldn’t be nearly as widespread if that face wasn’t half the reason the internet loved him in the first place. It’s no secret that Rife’s following was overwhelmingly made up of thirsty straight women, and his recent heel-turn with his much-maligned Netflix special Natural Selection seemed to be a calculated move to skew his audience more male. Now, the insecure dude comedy fans who hated Rife for his impossibly impressive facial features are joined by the women who hate him for making unoriginal, bottom-tier domestic violence jokes in scanning Rife’s every pore for imperfections.

Thankfully, Rife closed the case on his cavities five years before the controversy even started. Dental work is hardly a cardinal sin, even by the internet’s impossible beauty standards – and, even if he did get work done on his jaw as well, his facial transformation still shouldn’t be one of his career’s black eyes.