During his appearance on Club Shay Shay, comedian Matt Rife opened up about the sharp decline of his TikTok reach. Rife, who built a following of nearly 20 million on the app, admitted his relationship with TikTok was never a happy one.
“I never wanted to do it,” he told host Shannon Sharpe. “I ha te TikTok. It’s the most poisonous thing on earth right now. When it was about to get banned in America, I was stoked.”
Despite his personal feelings toward the platform, Rife acknowledged what it did for his career. At his peak, he said, “I was getting a million views an hour on there as soon as I posted a video.”
Then, gradually, that changed. “Little by little, it started to go away,” he noted. “You’re only something new and fancy for a little while.” But after roughly a year and a half, the situation became something more significant. “They just completely dropped off. I couldn’t reach any of my followers for some reason.”
Rife decided to go directly to TikTok for answers. He stated, “I started hitting up TikTok. You know, they can find you a representative that works over there and everything.” What he heard on that Zoom call was surprising. “They told me through my face on Zoom, they were like, ‘Yeah, we just don’t push standup anymore.'”
He pushed back. “I was like, ‘Okay, so I have 20 million followers who want to see what I’m posting and you won’t let them see it?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we just only push the trends that are current right now.'”
The representative went further, acknowledging Rife’s role in the platform’s standup wave. He stated, “They said, ‘Standup comedy was a trend on our platform, but you kind of helped spearhead them quite a bit.’ But they were like, ‘It went on for much longer than it should have. Most trends only last like a month or two.’ And yeah, now we just don’t push standup as a platform.”
When Rife asked what he should do with his 20 million followers, the suggestion he received did not go over well. He stated, “They said, ‘Maybe just do the trends. Like, you know, if there’s a new dance people are doing or whatever.’ On Zoom, I said, ‘I’ll off myself on TikTok Live before I ever dance on TikTok. Are you crazy?’ They didn’t find it funny at all, but I was also serious.”
The experience left him cautious about advising other comedians to build their audience on social media. He stated, “It’s such a shame that I can’t advise other comedians to build an audience on social media, because eventually they’re just going to shift the algorithm. You can’t reach them anyways. It’s so unfortunate.”
