Matt Rife Said He'd Had An “Epiphany” That Haters Are Just “Jealous,” & The Brutal Way He Was Shut Down Is Being Praised

In case you missed it, comic Matt Rife has not been having a good month following the release of his Netflix special, Natural Selection.

After spending years trying to get his big break on the comedy circuit, Matt blew up on TikTok just last year and built himself a pretty huge online following made up of mostly women.

So his fans were horrified when Matt decided to open his special with a problematic joke about domestic violence — soon after he had admitted that he’d consciously made the show with a male audience in mind.

Elsewhere in the same interview with Variety, Matt appeared to have a chip on his shoulder about women being a core part of his fanbase as he insisted: “Despite what you think about me online, I don’t pander my career to women.”

Unsurprisingly, Matt’s decision to try and appeal to men by mocking violence against women did not land well, and he was called out on social media for “pandering to frat bros” and betraying the fanbase to which he owes much of his success.

Twitter @Cheryl_Swore / Via Twitter: @Cheryl_Swore

And Matt’s name making headlines also prompted people to look into his past career, with many old clips of him resurfacing on social media in recent weeks.

One of these videos was taken from his time on the MTV show Wild ’N Out back in 2015, where he exhibited “trash” behavior toward Zendaya when he failed to get her to spit out the water that she was holding in her mouth by making her laugh.

As the star remained unfazed by Matt’s comedic attempts, he stormed over to her chair and grabbed her face as he shouted: “Spit that water out so I can get your number please!”

Matt was immediately called out by the rest of the cast — including his own teammates, who admitted that he’d gone too far by touching Zendaya without her consent.

“Had I known matt rife was the same guy on wild n out that touched zendaya’s face, I would’ve instantly hated him,” one person tweeted in response to the clip. Another added: “totally forgot matt rife was on wild ‘n out and made the weird comments to zendaya. it’s all starting to make sense now.”

Twitter @lwtdayaaa / Via Twitter: @lwtdayaaa

Twitter @Kirith0tt / Via Twitter: @Kirith0tt

And over the weekend, another resurfaced clip from Matt’s career gained traction on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This one was much more recent, with the video being taken from his appearance on the Cancelled with Tana Mongeau podcast in June of this year.

Reflecting on cancel culture during the conversation, Matt opened up about the “humbling epiphany” that he had about his haters that brought him a lot of peace.

Speaking to Tana and her cohost Brooke Schofield, Matt explained: “Here’s a very humbling epiphany that I’ve had recently, because so many fucking people hate me for really no reason, and it made me realize that people only hate somebody they’re jealous of.”

“I’ve been guilty of hating people,” he went on. “And when I really sat back and thought about it, it was because I was jealous of where that person was in their life, like, I felt like they got an opportunity that maybe I should have gotten.”

“That’s a really, really good well-rounded answer that I’m trying to wrap my head around,” Tana earnestly replied, to which Matt proudly responded: “Thank you.”

Tana then asked: “Do you think people who hate Osama bin Laden are just jealous of him?”

And the host has won high praise for her witty response to Matt’s “egotistical” remarks. Captioning the video as they shared it to X, a user wrote: “crying over Matt Rife on Tana’s podcast looking like an idiot.”

Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @gardeningbabe

The tweet has since been seen more than 13.5 million times, racking up thousands of likes and retweets as people reacted to the exchange.

“‘Humbling epiphany’ followed by ‘everyone who hates me is just jealous’ is so lacking in self-awareness it’s hilarious,” one person said in response.

Twitter @bo_bacey / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @bo_bacey

Another echoed: “I also love that, to him, the idea of ‘everyone who hates me is actually just jealous of me’ is ‘humbling’/Because if that’s you being humble I’d hate to imagine how big your head was before.”

Twitter @Sabrina45X / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @Sabrina45X

“The humbling epiphany is that people are jealous of him?” one more asked.

Twitter @SweetArreitLove / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @SweetArreitLove

Others praised the way that Tana had baited Matt before delivering the final blow, with one X user tweeting: “‘That was a really really well rounded answer I’m trying to wrap my head around’ I know he thought she was being fr.”

Twitter @hotpissers2 / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @hotpissers2

“He said ‘thank you’ not expecting what was gonna come next,” another wrote.

Twitter @theBambi6 / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @theBambi6

“Tana is unironically funnier than him, those last five seconds are golden,” somebody else responded, while one more claimed: “this ‘tana’ individual just outdid matt rife’s entire comedy career in 0.5 seconds and i respect that so much.”

Twitter @catherineesson / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @catherineesson

Twitter @fairytongues / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @fairytongues

Another said: “seeing an egotistical man get brought down a peg literally makes my day. this video put a lil pep in my step fr.”

Twitter @babybug777 / Twitter @gardeningbabe / YouTube @cancelledwithtanamongeau739 / Via Twitter: @babybug777

If you’re wondering, Matt laughed off Tana’s question and jokingly said that “of course” people are jealous of Osama bin Laden. He replied: “Of course, of course — they’re mad that he was the one calling the shots.”

In response to the initial backlash to his Netflix special, Matt courted more criticism when he posted a link to his “apology” on his Instagram story only for it to lead to a medical shop website’s page for “special needs helmets.”

At the time, Matt was called out for “using ableism” in an apparent bid to seem “edgy,” and he has not publicly responded to anymore of the scrutiny that he is currently facing.