Comedian Matt Rife is facing yet more backlash following a joke he made during a recent Netflix special and his baffling reaction to the criticism.
The 28-year-old opened his Netflix special, titled Natural Selection, with a joke which critics deemed to be sexist and trivializing domestic violence.
In the initial joke that caused the offense, he told the audience: "I've only been to Baltimore one time, and the hostess who seats you had a black eye - a full black eye.
"It wasn't like, 'What happened?' It was pretty obvious what happened. 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.'"
Understandably, the connotation that someone would be hit in the face for not being able to cook did not sit well with many people, who called Rife out for the distasteful joke.
Some of the crowd called him out for it at the time, to which he replied: "[I'm] testing the water, seeing if y'all are going to be fun or not.
"I figured we start the show with domestic violence, the rest of the show should be pretty smooth sailing," adding: "Of course I felt bad for her. She should have had her protection crystals, you know what I mean?"
When people started to call out the offensive joke online, Rife decided to double down by sharing a response that left fans even less impressed.
He took to his Instagram story to share a photo of himself on stage, adding in overlay text: "If you've ever been offended by a joke I've told - here's a link to my official apology."
Beneath that, there was a link which he'd titled: "Tap to solve your issue", which took people to a website where people could purchase helmets designed for people with special needs.
His flippant response led many others to call him out online, commenting: "The 'comedian' @mattrife decided to make a joke about domestic violence and instead of apologizing, he doubled down. His audience is largely women. Or was. If he was going to go down in flames, he could’ve at least made the joke funny."
Others added: "this is the most disgusting thing i’ve ever seen @mattrife," and: "there’s no way you could make things worse for yourself, unless ur name is matt rife."
Another viewer shared his thoughts over on TikTok, captioning the video: "This man is literally insane for that."
Rife has yet to remove the post from his Instagram story as of the time of writing, but added another post claiming he was on the "naughty list" with a link to a clip from one of his shows, as well as a screenshot from someone else congratulating him for his show on Netflix.
He previously also faced backlash for comments he'd made about women's bodies on an episode of the Stiff Socks podcast.
At the time, he addressed the incident, telling the New York Times that he thought he reaction was "insane", adding: "You’re mad at somebody that’s just trying to make you laugh? That’s such an insane concept to me."
Featured image credit: Taylor Hill/Getty Images
