What happened between Matt Rife and Brandon Wardell? Controversy resurfaces amid Netflix special backlash 

On November 15, TikTok star, actor, and comedian Matt Rife debuted on Netflix with his comedy special Natural Selection. However, since then, he has been put under fire for opening his show with an offensive domestic violence joke and for posting a fake apology, disrespecting the special-needs community.

In the wake of the recent controversy, Matt Rife’s past beef with an aspiring comedian and X (formerly Twitter) user Brandon Wardell has resurfaced.

In a series of posts, Rife publicly harassed Brandon Wardell, only to be cornered by him. Some of Rife’s now-deleted tweets date back to 2016. Not only that, but the Twitter battle with Wardell also exposed Rife’s 2012 tweets containing alleged racist and homophobic slurs. Later, however, Rife denied all allegations during an interview.

---

Exploring, in brief, the beef between Matt Rife and Brandon Wardell

As per Know Your Meme, in August 2016, Brandon Wardell posted two tweets mocking Matt Rife. Both had screenshots of the latter’s Instagram page, one even containing Rife’s shirtless picture.

Underneath it, Wardell wrote,

“This guy [Matt Rife] is a stand-up comedian lmao.”

At first, Rife didn’t respond to Wardell but turned his Instagram and Twitter accounts private. However, later, he hit back at Brandon via tweets, which he eventually deleted.

According to @NoJumper's tweet dated August 7, 2016, Rife challenged Wardell to a fight and later even threatened that if Brandon didn’t meet him in person, he would “come to you.” In one tweet, he even replied to Brandon making fun of his fight challenge and wrote,

“Jokes are supposed to be funny. You’re a grown man. Don’t ever f*cking disrespect me. You don’t know me, understand?”

Matt Rife even made fun of Wardell’s “comedian” status and dared him to speak up publicly. Not only that, when Brandon made a fake apology for taking “corny screenshots” of his Instagram, mocking him for having more followers there for his looks, rather than “the app where u use words,” Matt further retaliated by calling him a “douche” and saying,

“You’re gonna publicly apologize. Backhanded compliments… Big mistake.”

The beef with Brandon Wardell even ended up exposing 15-year-old Rife’s alleged racist and homophobic side, where he called many people slurs while also ridiculing them for being gay.

While Matt Rife later defended himself on Snapchat and in a 2017 interview with Very Good Light, saying he was too young to understand better, netizens never forgot the beef or his past Twitter encounters.

---

Brandon Wardell specializes in online humor

According to Know Your Meme, Brandon Wardell is an American comedian specializing in online humor. Currently, he has over 575,7000 X followers. Now based in Los Angeles, he is originally a Virginia native born and raised in Fairfax. He was a dropout of the Virginia Commonwealth University and moved to California to pursue a comedy career.

Now 31 years old, Brandon rose to fame in July 2016 when he made the term “D*cks Out for Harambe” viral on Twitter and Vine, based on the 2016 pop song by Rockie Gold by the same title. Wardell is often cited for turning the phrase into a popular meme inspired by the song and the death of the gorilla named Harambe.

Harambe was killed in the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016 after a toddler mistakenly entered the gorilla's cage and was grabbed and dragged by the animal. To save the boy's life, a zoo employee fatally shot down Harambe.

As per Famous Birthdays, the stand-up comedian has appeared in shows like Comedy Central’s @Midnight and wrote comic articles for Vice. In 2014, he released a joint comedy album with Bob Odenkirk named Amateur Hour. He also toured with comic Bo Burnham in 2015.

Currently, he co-hosts the podcast called The Brandon Jamel Show with Jamel Johnson while doing other stand-up comedy and karaoke shows.