Gen Z's favourite comedian thinks being hot is hurting his career.

Diving deep into the social media presence of comedian Matt Rife reveals a few things: He has a new Netflix special. He really likes to work out. He exclusively wears his caps backwards. And his cheekbones could cut glass.

That last one is, in his mind, a little unfortunate.

Rife is a 28-year-old TikTok sensation with more than 350 million likes and 18 million followers on the platform. He has been performing stand-up for more than a decade, but he's faced a really rapid rise over the past couple of years.

Rife went mega-viral in 2021, with a video of him speaking to a member of his audience about how she broke up with her healthcare worker boyfriend because he "didn't do anything" ("Oh, I'm sorry, you broke up with a hero?" Rife responded to huge laughter from the audience, and soon after, thousands on TikTok).

This kind of thing – riffing with his audience, whether it's about something deep or in response to women propositioning him via lewd t-shirts – has become his 'thing'. He's also released a number of comedy specials, including a new one called Matt Rife: Natural Selection on Netflix, and had a few small sitcom roles. It's pretty inarguable that he's succeeding in his chosen career.

But it turns out that Rife, successful as he may be, believes he wakes up each day with an added hurdle.

Basically, he's too hot.

And it's hindering his comedy.

When I, a Millennial whose algorithms are stuck in 2017, asked younger colleagues if they knew who he was, they practically squealed. "He's so hot," people screamed at me. "And also hilarious," they'd add, a minute or two later once the flush had drained from their cheeks.

The poor man. He just wants to be funny, but he has been cursed. Cursed by a nice face.

Earlier this year, in an interview with Men's Health that went viral on TikTok, Rife said being "physically attractive" wasn't helping his career.

"People don't want to laugh at physically attractive people. You don't want to walk on stage and have people looking at your arms rather than listening to your jokes. I think it just makes me work that much harder on the material and the jokes that I'm trying to tell, to get people to focus on the real show," he said.

@menshealthmag Because who wants to laugh at the really, really ridiculously good-looking person? #mattrife #mattrifecomedy #mattrifeedit #comediansoftiktok #tellingjokes #tryingtobefunny ♬ original sound - Men’s Health

This week, in conversation with Today.com, he reiterated the struggle.

"I would say it's harder," he responded to questioning about whether being good-looking makes a comedy career more difficult.

"Because of the fact that this conversation is even happening. 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."

Why though?

"Because people don't like you," he said. 

"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."

This is where things get particularly meta, because *now* people don't like Rife because he talks about how he thinks people don't like him because he is hot. 

We all have our burdens, don't we?

Feature image: Instagram/@mattrife @beastwilliams_