Who is Dina Hashem? 2019 Venmo joke controversy explained as comedian's tweet about Matt Rife goes viral 

In July 2019, comedian Dina Hashem made headlines after she delivered a controversial joke saying that rapper XXXTentacion was murdered in a robbery gone wrong and should have opted not to carry around so much cash but rather pay via the digital wallet Venmo.

“That’s the first thing I thought when I heard that [XXXTentacion’s fatal shooting]. Like, ‘I don’t have Venmo, I should get Venmo’.”

Dina Hashem said this during an appearance on the Comedy Central show This Week at the Comedy Cellar. While many fellow comedians, including Django Gold and Curtis Cook, defended Hashem, Matt Rife slammed her, to the point of her getting canceled over social media.

In the wake of the latest Matt Rife Netflix special controversy, where he opened with a domestic violence joke, Dina Hashem took to her Twitter to remind everyone that the same person once tried to oust her.

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Dina Hashem is a standup comedian and has also written comic scripts for a couple of HBO Max's shows

According to her official website, dinahashem.com, Dina Hashem is a standup comedian who began her career in 2010 by participating in the New Jersey Comedy Festival as a college-goer. She ended up winning the contest, gained instant popularity in the standup community, and later moved to New York City to pursue a career as a professional comedian.

The Arab-American comic is a regular performer in popular New York City comedy clubs, including The Comedy Cellar and Gotham Comedy Club. Best known for her dry and dark comedy revolving around life, she has so far been part of various comedy shows such as Comedy Central’s Roast Battle and Clusterfest, TBS’ CONAN, and SF Sketchfest.

Besides, she has written comic scripts for HBO Max’s show The S*x Lives of College Girls and BJ Novak’s The Premise. She will be part of a Ramy Youssef animated show soon, which will be premiered on Amazon Prime.

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Exploring, in brief, the Venmo joke controversy

In mid-2019, Dina Hashem, on Comedy Central's show This Week at the Comedy Cellar, made a joke surrounding the untimely death of 20-year-old Florida rapper XXXTentacion, who was murdered in June 2018. Here’s what she said:

“Is anyone still morning XXXTentacion? He’s a rapper, who was murdered, he’s dead now. He was shot, he was on his way to buy a car with $50,000 in cash and somebody shot him and took the money, which is very tragic. But I also think it would be a very good Venmo commercial.”

Dina Hashem further added how that’s the first thing that crossed her mind when she heard the news of the rapper’s murder and thought to herself how she should get a Venmo.

When the news of her joke surfaced online as part of its promotion, fans of XXXTentacion and many other netizens called her out for being insensitive. In fact, the stand-up comedian received death threats, forcing her to turn her Twitter account private and announce that the joke would not air on television.

While many of her colleagues, fans, and friends defended her, including Dan Wilbur and Kath Barbadoro, fellow comedian Matt Rife demanded her cancellation and deemed the joke offensive.

Now, in the wake of Matt Rife’s latest controversy surrounding his domestic violence joke on his debut Netflix special Natural Selection and later posting a fake and insensitive apology with a link to a special-needs helmets website, Dina Hashem took to X to remind everyone how the same Matt Rife once called for her cancellation for her 2019 Venmo joke.

“Idc about Matt Rife discourse but let it be known that this is the same man who tried to have me canceled over a Venmo joke in 2019,” she tweeted.

Following her revelation, netizens have further continued to put Rife under fire. Here are some of the comments in this regard.

It is noteworthy that when Dina Hashem faced backlash in 2019, she immediately issued a mea culpa via her Instagram Story by saying:

“I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, that’s never what I want. I’m a comic and use jokes to try and make dark topics less painful but I realize not everyone feels that way, and don’t want anyone to feel badly. It was taken down and won’t air on TV.”

Meanwhile, many defended her, saying that XXXTentacion may have died tragically, but ahead of his death, he was awaiting trial on various charges, including aggravated battery, domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and witness tampering with respect to a 2016 domestic violence case filed by his pregnant former girlfriend.

While those charges were dropped posthumously, a tape was later released by Miami law enforcement, which revealed that the late rapper confessed to a series of violent crimes, including stabbing eight people, as per Metro.