Do We Need to Talk About Andrew Tate?

Tate is not an exception to our cultural definition of manliness. He is the logical conclusion.

There seems to be some debate about just how responsible Greta Thunberg’s Twitter dustup was for Andrew Tate’s arrest. Who cares! Let people hold onto their folklore. As far as I’m concerned it, this is a Batman and Gordon at the end of The Dark Knight situation. “Because sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes, people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.” The Internet can have this one. As far as we all are concerned, the climate change teen one-shotted the toxic human trafficking asshole. The end.

Either way, Tate is headed to jail, and even a prison abolitionist like me has a hard time getting too worked up about it. But while the man himself may be locked up, his stench remains. It’s fun to roast the guy. I don’t plan on stopping. But we need to talk about Andrew Tate, because the problem he represents is real and a lot of Christian leaders who are trying to address it are only making it worse.

So, a quick primer on Tate. It’s unpleasant stuff. A former kickboxer and Big Brother contestant, Tate finally found his real niche as “the king of toxic masculinity” (his words). He’s an online influencer who uses his YouTube channel to tell men how to get laid and make money. His own business strategy “allegedly” involved seducing women and then moving them to surveilled homes where they would be forced to do porn or else. “Allegedly” is in quotes there because Tate has more or less admitted to most of this in interviews. He once said he moved to Romania because “rape laws are more lenient there.”

Tate started to get a lot of attention last year when his TikToks started going viral. In them, he’d usually be posing with luxury cars, girls in bikinis, or both. You might think he was pitching this as a “follow my advice and you too could have all this” grift, but that would be to miss just how pathetic he really is. Actually, most of Tate’s energy was directed towards how much better he is than you. “You are poor,” read one of his last tweets before his arrest. “You are unimportant. Men do not fear you. Your woman disagrees with you. Your lives are shit. If I was forced to endure a year of your life it would be the worst level of depression imaginable.” He posted this on Christmas Day.

So, yeah. The running theme to your standard Andrew Tate vlog is “you losers will never have all this.”

This message proved pretty popular, especially among teen boys. Middle and high school teachers linked a rise in sexist language among their students to the Andrew Tate fandom, and the guy was booted from most social media platforms. That is, until Elon Musk ushered in our new age of free speech and reinstated Tate’ account, which Tate promptly used to pick a fight with Greta Thunberg and the rest is history.

The relief that this guy seems to be reaping what he sowed is tempered a little by the fact that his sowing went pretty well for a long time. There are a lot of parents and schoolteachers out there who are not only worried about Tate’s influence, but baffled by it. How was such an obviously terrible guy able to attract such a huge fandom among middle school boys?