Andrew Tate – Will S
During Mr Lockyer’s chapel address last week, he mentioned Andrew Tate. I am pretty sure everyone knows who Tate is, and, knowing he’s a figure of controversy, when he was mentioned everyone’s ears seemed to prick up. Tate has accumulated over 14 billion views on Tiktok, been banned from most social media and still is one of the largest influencers in the world. The question is, why?
Tate offers advice, tries to motivate people and spreads messages to young men encouraging strength, and how you can make money. Tate is estimated to be worth $150 million, and was a world champion kickboxer in two weight divisions. These are impressive. Who wouldn’t want to be rich, strong, successful and now immensely famous? It seems obvious that Top G is going to be a very successful influencer. He shares some quite traditional views too; “A man must physically protect his woman. But a woman must spiritually protect her man. She must bring positivity and joy.” On the surface, this can seem like quite an attractive idea and in some ways, what teenage boy (Tate’s major audience) doesn’t want to protect his family and be protected by his wife?
Unfortunately, this is where the praise has to end. Tate is a misogynist, states that rape victims should bear responsibility and acted out how he would attack a woman if she accused him of cheating. “It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b***h.” Also, he talks about how women who have been with lots of men have less value; “if you’re a girl that everyone’s had, your value is gonna be destroyed.”
I am a teenage boy, and I’ve seen quite a bit of Tate’s content on TikTok, and I have found some of it entertaining. But you have to think to yourself, what is he actually saying? It seems funny at the time but when you think about it, what he’s saying is wrong. What I’ve mentioned above is horrible and not like that, but other content is. Here’s an example. Describing a situation on the street where someone needs CPR, Tate says bystanders ask ‘Who knows CPR?’. Tate replies, ‘Well me’. They ask him to help and he says ‘No.’ They ask why and he goes ‘Cuz I ain’t gay’. They ask him ‘Then why’d you say you know CPR’ and he says ‘Cuz I don’t lie’. Here we have two messages, one very bad saying don’t perform CPR on the same sex because it makes you gay, insinuating that is a bad thing, but then saying don’t lie. That is how Tate manages to influence us. He puts in a bad message in a funny manner, followed by a good message, don’t lie, making you think he’s right. But that first part isn’t funny when you think about it, and that’s the problem. In this stuff, its quite clear Tate is playing a character, and if you watch some of his interviews, for example this one, he’s logical and doesn’t say stupid things. It seems Tate plays up to this character to maintain such popularity. https://youtu.be/7O-_CVA27ak
At the start of this I asked why is Tate so successful on social media? I think its because we (speaking on behalf of boys my age) want to see someone rebel against society. We want to see someone ‘Take the red pill’ and ‘Escape the matrix’, because we don’t want to have boring lives where we are ‘Slaves to the matrix’. We want (very generally) to have nice cars and yachts and houses and be able to easily attract girls and be rich. That’s why he appeals, and there is no one else doing it. Mr Lockyer talked of how there are plenty of male role models far better than Tate, who we actually should look up to, and he’s right. But who of them are creating as much entertaining content, still showing some rebellion and so obviously displaying, on the surface at least, a life we would want to lead? Most famous people online are scared of getting cancelled and losing their reputation because they said something that people on Twitter disagree with; something that wasn’t woke. I doubt many of us in this school are woke, eco-warriors who make it our life’s work to learn a million pronouns and never voice any opinion that might contradict people on Twitter. But people that aren’t and are just quite normal seem to rarely express their views on social media for fear of getting cancelled, so it is only the people with quite extreme, right-wing views that do. This is how people like Tate arise and could be part of the reason for his popularity. Furthermore, there is a sense of teenage boys feeling somewhat repressed on social media and as though they are the enemy, which also might be why Tate has become so popular. Either way, following Tate’s ideas is misguided and by supporting even some of what he says, you are supporting him as a whole, including his misogyny and spread of violence against women.
Tate is now in prison, claiming that the matrix have got to him and he’s had his second strike. What’s more likely is that police in Romania have acted on reports of sexual exploitation by Tate from six women, alongside reports of human trafficking. Whilst the case is yet to go to court, Tate, guilty or not, is a nasty person who has not helped people but rather spread hateful ideas to the masses.
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