If you’re on TikTok, chances are, you’ve seen Matt Rife.
The 28-year-old comedian has seized a corner of the internet, leaving his nearly 18 million followers obsessed with his interactions with his crowd members and launching him into the comedy mainstream.
One TikTok in particular gained traction on the app this summer — a video featuring Rife posted on Men’s Health magazine’s account, in which Rife contended working out and being a “physically attractive” person didn’t help him as a comedian.
Now, during a sit-down with TODAY.com, he expands on the reasons why.
“I would say it’s harder because of the fact that this conversation is even happening,” he says. “But the fact that I said it and I’m doing Men’s Health magazine, which seemed like the perfect context to talk about the shape you’re in, I would say it definitely doesn’t help.
“Because people don’t like you. People assume your life is easier when you have all these good things going for you. There’s nothing funny about somebody living an easy life, or so you would assume. So that’s why I would say it’s a little bit harder. You have to win people over more often.”
Rife has been working in the comedy space for more than a decade: He’s gone from open mics in his hometown near Columbus, Ohio, to self-producing and crowdfunding his first comedy specials.
His next special, “Matt Rife: Natural Selection,” will be different — it’s set to premiere Nov. 15 on Netflix. Rife describes going from handling every aspect of his previous specials, where he set up chairs, checked people in, had people sign Covid waivers, to just being able to work on his jokes.
“I was involved in everything,” he says of his previous specials. “This one, I got to just focus on my set most of the time, which was such a relief. So much easier.”
He says the persona he adopts in the Netflix special, as well as his other performances, is an exaggerated version of himself.
“I mean, I play into all the stereotypes people assume. Like, I’ll play into like the funny naive f---boy kind of thing,” he says.
Rife adds that it’s not all a façade: “But there is a lot of comedy and naivety to me, and I think I am a bit like that in real life. Like I’m just kind of dumb and gullible. And I think an exaggerated version of that gets resonated with a lot of people. That way, if there’s not something (they) find in common, they can at least laugh at me, and I’m happy with that as well.”
Since leaning into TikTok at the beginning of 2022, Rife has amassed a following of more than 17.9 million followers. He says he credits his popularity on the app to three videos in particular, starting with his “Lazy Hero” bit, where he pokes fun at a member of the crowd for breaking up with an emergency room worker.
“All social media success, as far as, like, the content you put on there that catches fire and goes viral, is random. I had no strategy whatsoever. I was just posting a little bit of material in the beginning, and that led to posting some crowd work, and one just accidentally sparked,” he says.
Rife says he still has no idea which bits will take off on the app: “I mean, to this day, there’s no method.”
A TikTok that does well, Rife says, reaches around 20 million views. He references one unspecified clip that he didn’t think was that funny, that hit eight figures, while another clip he thought was his “best clip ever,” only reached around 1 million views.
“Listen, it’s all relative,” he says with a laugh, acknowledging the magnitude of the numbers.
He shares the two other TikToks he considers to be among his most viral: “Awesome Autism,” where he asks about a crowd member’s son who is autistic, and “Cookies and MILF,” where he receives a raunchy gift bag from Christina, a member of the crowd in Iowa.
Rife reveals he just had a reunion with Christina, a now iconic member of his comedy lore.
“Funny enough, she was at my show a week ago. We were back in Iowa. She was sitting front row, and I called her daughter again and got this amazing reunion,” he says, teasing that a TikTok recounting the moment will be dropping soon.
Rife, who’s currently on his “ProbleMATTic” comedy tour, shares he’s ready to break into acting, especially now that the actors strike appears to be coming to a close.
“With me being on this tour and everything being chaotic, I’m just waiting to see what falls in line in the next couple of months,” he says. “But in the new year, I’m really, really dedicated to developing and producing my own projects to star in, and hopefully getting a chance to work with some other people on their projects.”
And despite much of his success coming from social media, Rife is adamant it’s not for him.
“My goal is to be successful enough that I can delete every app off my phone and have somebody else run it for the fans who want to stay up to date on things,” he says. “I hate it.”
