The key to Matt Rife's success (or failure) is in the hands of his audience in the “Lucid” Netflix Special

For a full hour at The Comedy Zone in Charlotte, North Carolina, Matt Rife relied solely on his audience to keep his show alive. The comedian spent his entire set engaging with the crowd, bouncing off their jokes with jokes and rebuttals of his own. Rife's performance was captured for his upcoming Netflix special Clearwill be released on August 13th.

“This series is going to be completely different than anything you've ever seen live or on Netflix before,” Rife says at the start of the trailer for the special, which has been billed as the streaming giant's “first crowd-sourced special.” .” “It's just me and you,” he continued. “I don't know what you're going to say, I don't know what I'm going to say. I want you to know that you are just as responsible for how this goes as I am.''

Last year, Rife premiered his Netflix comedy debut, NATURAL CHOICE, to dismal reviews from both audiences and critics. The routine opened with a domestic violence joke and leaned heavily on Rife, detailing his preferences in women as a comedic crutch. The comedian's career was largely built around clips of his standup performances that went viral on TikTok, many of which centered around his crowd work. Natural Selection was an opportunity for him to prove to a wider audience that his jokes worked on paper, and that he wasn't just relying on his audience, he was actually making them for them. Clearin that sense, it's a return to what he seems to know best.

Clearly put off by claims that he's only famous for his short comedy club sets where he talks to audience members — these make up the bulk of his TikTok clips — Rife ends the scripted, feature-length script on a triumphant note, saying : “But what do I know, I'm just doing a lot of work, right?” Rolling rockwrote Miles Klee in a review NATURAL CHOICE. “He wants us to believe he showed the doubters. Too bad it reads as painfully insecure, the mockery of a comic who actually manipulates his fans into telling them they're a different breed, the “entertainers,” connoisseurs of dangerous and unspoken facts. The truth is, you can hear that shit anywhere.”