Matt Rife is Actually Ruining Christmas For Some Kids

The superstar stand-up who is a hit with 55-year-old women everywhere is becoming a lot less popular with his fanbase’s grandchildren.

Back in 2023, TikTok giant and comedy thirst-trapper Matt Rife attempted one of the most puzzling and unsuccessful heel-turns in the history of humor following the release of his Netflix special Natural Selection. By making dollar-store-jokebook-level jokes about domestic violence and intellectual disabilities while cozying up to far-right “thought” leaders like Jordan Peterson, Rife attempted to pander to the anti-woke, Rogan-adjacent wing of the comedy sphere, only to come up short and return to his crowd work shtick in the very next special.

Now, with his new holiday-themed hour Matt Rife: Unwrapped – A Christmas Crowd Work Special, Rife and the Netflix marketing team seem to be making a second attempt at an edgelord rebrand. Following the hour’s release on Tuesday, subscribers reported that the landing page for Netflix now auto-plays a clip from the special in which Rife discusses how – spoiler alert for any six-year-old Cracked readers – Santa Claus isn’t real, and the presents under the tree are the work of the parents.

After two years of begging the Kill Tony Right to take him seriously as a boundary-pusher, Rife has to playing a villain straight out of Sesame Street.

In a recent Reddit post, one Netflix subscriber pointed out that Rife's new special will spoil the open secret about Santa to any child who ventures outside the Kids Profile in a thread titled, “Netflix and Matt Rife ruining Santa for little kids if you open the app on its default setting.”

“Netflix’s new Matt Rife comedy special was just released and being pushed as their featured content,” the Redditor reported, “If you open your standard profile on the app Matts special will be the pushed as their recommendation with a short live preview as the default Netflix setting. If you were to just open the app within the first few seconds it’s Matt in a bit directly saying Santa is your parents.” 

The user opined, “Probably their marketing team pushing for edgy pr or even Matt but potentially ruining the magical world of Santa for little kids for clicks imo is scummy.”

Knowing Rife, we're almost certain that the choice in preview snippet was incredibly deliberate, and all the parents complaining that Rife ruined their kids' Christmas is just some sociopathic guerilla marketing that is going entirely according to plan. Add to that, it would be just like the “Nothing, you already told her twice!” comedian to decide that the only way to convince Roganites that he's into “dark humor” would be to punch down on literal children.

Honestly, just by talking about Rife's latest hack attempt at a dick move, we're probably making all his Christmas wishes come true. So, hey, credit where it's due, Matt Rife, you are truly a master at marketing – maybe try channeling this mad genius energy into comedy next time.