How Andrew Tate is Corrupting our Generation

Venaya Binwani

If you’ve opened Instagram at any point this week, I’d put money on the fact that Andrew Tate has made an appearance on your feed at least once. Whether you willingly followed the ex-kickboxer or subscribe to a sleuth of activism and news platforms like I do, you may have heard that Mr Andrew Emerson Tate has been stripped of his platforms on both Instagram and Facebook. Meta has decided to ban the self-acclaimed misogynist due to violating community guidelines and propagating hate speech all over the internet. With an Instagram follower count of over 4.7 million and a reach of 11.6 billion views on TikTok, let’s take a deep dive into Andrew Tate’s fall from fame, and why this is a moment to celebrate for women everywhere. [1,2]

Andrew Tate gained notoriety in 2016 after he premiered in the British reality TV show Big Brother, where he was later removed for beating a woman with a belt, which he claimed to be consensual. He received further backlash in 2017 at the height of the #MeToo Movement where he expressed that women should “bare some responsibility” for being raped or sexually assaulted. Since then, he has premiered on various talk shows and podcasts, where his hyper-misogynistic views and perspective on modern masculinity have garnered billions of views across the globe. Through his growing internet fame, Tate has been able to project his extremist ideologies surrounding women and what it means to "be a man", leaving many shaken by his alarming views. [2,3]

In one interview, Tate expressed that he preferred to date younger women between the ages of 18 and 19, as he was able to leave his ‘imprint’ on them. Here, the 35-year-old disturbingly expresses how he can manipulate a young woman’s naivety to his advantage, describing how an older woman would leave him with a greater mess to clean up. To make matters worse, Andrew Tate has also shared extremely graphic descriptions of how he would physically abuse women if they accused him of cheating and coerce them into having sex with him. “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b****”. [1] The language he uses makes me physically sick to my stomach, but I think it’s important that we stay vigilant of the media that we consume, and how young impressionable minds are at risk of falling prey to Tate’s perverse principles. As an avid supporter of Donald Trump, Tate has expressed his respect for the ex-United States president, claiming that “he’s the best that America could’ve ever hoped for”.

Whilst the quotes I’ve highlighted above may be some of Tate's most notorious, they are far from being a comprehensive list. However, what concerns me most, is that despite Tate’s shameless use of violent language toward women, he still receives the benefit of the doubt from many of his supporters. Some of the young people I’ve spoken to personally, have even said that they recognise that Tate’s ideas about women are deranged and dated, but continue to value his online presence as a source of motivation and inspiration. Hundreds of young boys are turning to Tate as a role model, and we shouldn’t underestimate the impact he has had in propagating a hypermasculine and toxic image of what a man should be. In recent weeks, several school teachers have stepped forward to share how their students are beginning to emulate the language and behaviour used by Tate on TikTok. A recent video that I found to be very striking demonstrates a sixth-grade teacher exasperated by the number of 11-year-old students claiming to love Andrew Tate. The teacher describes that one student even called a girl fat because "she sat at home and ate all day", and that she should be ashamed for using men for money like all other women. The student then said that "at least he was a man who worked for his money". Another teacher reported that some of her high school freshmen were refusing to do work assigned by the female teachers, because "women are inferior to men, and belong in the kitchen." [4] It’s no surprise that these young people are being infected with Tate’s vile ideologies, but what is shocking is how unaware so many parents seem to be of the media their kids are consuming.

Apart from Tate’s controversial online presence, he is also well known for offering paid courses and memberships on income generation. His online course ‘Hustlers University' (HU) has attracted over 110,000 members since its launch in 2021. The glorified discord server offers advice on wealth creation strategies through passive income models, one prime example being cryptocurrency. Tate’s online course claimed to be a beginner’s guide to making money, just within a few days of signing up. Since then, the course has been under heavy scrutiny by financial experts, who have pointed out both a lack of validity and originality to Tate’s ideas. Digital marketing expert Charles Floate describes much of the advice propagated in his Copywriting, Ecommerce, Affiliate, and Freelance channels to be outdated, or freely available by multiple YouTube creators, making the $50 Tate charges for HU’s bozo advice, absolutely redundant. Moreover, Tate’s acclaimed professors who are believed to run the course are just members of his telegram group The War Room, which ropes in vulnerable men into subscribing to Tate’s misogynistic money-making schemes, like managing their girlfriend’s OnlyFans account. Thankfully the membership to Tate’s big boys' club only surmounts to $5000 a year - a perfectly reasonable sum, if you ask me. Unsurprisingly, Tate’s online course has been labelled a pyramid scheme, which involves using controversial multi-level marketing (MLM) techniques to funnel a naive man’s dollar straight into Tate’s well-lined pockets. For you finance rookies out there (myself included), MLM schemes essentially involve exploiting an unpaid workforce to promote a company’s product using commission-based compensations. Essentially, members of HU would receive a small payment for promoting the course using affiliate links that would encourage others to subscribe, earning them a greater sum of money than the contents of the course itself. [5]

Whilst Tate has been purged from several social media sites, I doubt that the impact he has made will be erased anytime soon. Just last week, Tate released a 1 hour and 13-minute long video on Vimeo, which opened with descriptions of his experience with childhood bullying. Tate claimed that he was forced to overcome these challenges himself, being taught that crying and seeking out support was not how a man should conduct himself. Assuming what Tate shares is true, it appears his experience with abuse and indoctrinated sense of hypermasculinity has driven him to project misogynistic ideas all over the internet. Tate continues to describe that he truly believes women should be protected and provided for, claiming that the feminist community has weaponised quotes taken out of context. [6]

While many may pity the internet star, it is a poor excuse to claim innocence from women hating, when one has admitted to moving to Romania for their lax laws on sexual assault. Regardless of Andrew Tate’s troubled past, it does not absolve him of the damage inflicted upon the young minds he has infiltrated, nor the harm he has brought to women across the world. An even greater lesson perhaps is the cogency with which social media influencers have on our youth, leading us to consider how we can help them decide what is right or wrong for themselves. With that being said, it is a triumph to see men being held accountable for their actions. Tate losing his social media platforms will not eradicate his presence entirely, but it is a step in the right direction to making online spaces safer for women.

References

1. 1. Inside the violent, misogynistic world of TikTok’s new star, Andrew Tate [Internet]. the Guardian. 2022 [cited 18 August 2022]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/06/andrew-tate-violent-misogynistic-world-of-tiktok-new-star

2. 2. The internet can’t stop talking about Andrew Tate [Internet]. NBC News. 2022 [cited 25 August 2022]. Available from: https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/viral/internet-cant-stop-talking-andrew-tate-tiktok-rcna42744

3. 3. Cocoran L. How Andrew Tate Poses A Real Threat To Women [Internet]. Marie Claire. 2022 [cited 19 August 2022]. Available from: https://www.marieclaire.com.au/andrew-tate-tiktok-dangerous

4. 4. Ritzen S. Teachers are warning parents online about Andrew Tate's misogyny 'ruining' teenage boys: 'I've never heard such vitriol' [Internet]. We Got This Covered. 2022 [cited 24 August 2022]. Available from: https://wegotthiscovered.com/news/andrew-tate-misogynistic-influence-teachers/

5. 5. Floate C. Hustlers University Review (HU 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0) - Is It Legit or A Scam? [Internet]. Charles Floate. 2022 [cited 24 August 2022]. Available from: https://www.charlesfloate.com/hustlers-university

6. Andrew Tate delivers “final message” on Vimeo after social media bans - Dexerto [Internet]. Dexerto. 2022 [cited 29 August 2022]. Available from: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/andrew-tate-delivers-final-message-on-vimeo-after-social-media-bans-1912468/