Tanking Tate: Rise and Fall of an influencer generates mixed response

Top G or Bottom L? Andrew Tate has made headlines through controversial statements degrading women and pushing his influence on young men via social media. The cornerstone of his beliefs center around masculinity and what a man ‘should’ be, while dragging down women in the process of building this definition. While he is widely regarded as extremely harmful and toxic, even being banned by most social media platforms, people vary in their perceptions of his philosophies.

Senior Vincent Bird views Tate’s popularity as a rebellion of sorts against emerging movements that he believes put a target on men.

“I feel like some young men need to feel more powerful because they've grown up with this increase in LGBTQ rights and women's rights, and some of them may not agree with some of those topics,” he said. “So, they probably felt like Andrew Tate was the answer to, and kind of the ‘anti’ of, what those movements are supporting. They kind of found refuge in Andrew Tate and were almost relieved that there was a different perspective.”

For junior Mason Klinger, Tate’s less controversial beliefs were tainted by sexist viewpoints. For instance, the influencer has posted that women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted.

“I feel like the very small bit of good that he would say was just completely overshadowed by a lot of the other stupid stuff that he would say half the time,” he said. “He did do a good job of self-confidence, but I feel like he took it too far. There was just so much that was wrong that I couldn't really support anything.”

Others, such as senior Indigo Schneider, believe the way Tate speaks is just as insulting as the mantras he repeats.

“I find even the way that he projects his views to be unpalatable. I really don't like how he interacts with the majority of the people that I see him talk to,” they said. “It's just generally very disrespectful and condescending. Even when he would say stuff that wasn't crazy extremist, I still just didn't want to listen to him as a person because I didn't like how he was talking about what he was talking about. You could tell there were some deeper feelings there, which obviously showed his true colors.”

Tate’s method of arguing is another negative aspect that causes Schneider to instantly switch videos whenever an unwanted clip pops up.

“I really don't like the aggression and the hate towards women and towards anyone that opposes him. I don't think it's a healthy way to express ideas,” they said. “I do think that everybody should be able to say their opinions and not be attacked directly. I really don't like Andrew Tate’s use of ad hominem; it's really counterproductive.”

Tate’s sometimes conflicting messages cause confusion for those who are in the gray area, struggling to determine how they feel about him. Though she doesn’t support Tate, junior Caylin Tedder has heard some of his juxtaposing viewpoints.

“It’s hard because he’ll say something really bad and then follow it up with something decent. He’ll say you should treat a woman respectfully… unless she does something wrong,” she said. “There are certain words and little sentences that he’ll say that I agree with, but then he adds on the rest and it ruins it.”

Even for those who don’t support Tate, having other people in one’s social circle that do can inspire unease.

“Andrew Tate’s videos will come up on my boyfriend’s feed, and he’ll watch the video. He doesn’t follow Andrew Tate, but it still makes me uncomfortable knowing that he’s acknowledging it,” Tedder said. “The way Tate puts women down puts an overall bad mindset on kids, especially the younger boys. They go into high school thinking that women are objects.”

An Index survey was conducted to research the impact of social media on high school students. An anonymous student explained why they support Tate.

“The reason I followed him was because the things he said motivated me to be better and more productive,” they said. “Some of you people think that he is a woman hater and abuser, which he is not. He believes that women are just as strong as men but in a different aspect.”

While some feel the need to cut off Tate completely due to the disrespectful language he posts, others like Bird are able to extract humor and not take Tate’s advice to heart.

“I feel like the group that takes him more seriously is the harmful group; that's the group that people need to be concerned about. The people that are just laughing and thinking that it's comedy are the ones that are going to realize, ‘okay, this has gone a little too far’,” he said. “I feel like it's okay to have a laugh every once in a while, as long as you're not taking him seriously. There's no harm in it. Just a quick laugh with your friends and inner circle.”

Senior Sunny Wolf finds it harmful to support Tate or engage in any of his content at all, even the less derogatory content focusing on motivation and ‘hustle culture’.

“It’s because you're giving him a platform, and even if you're not specifically giving him a platform to talk about being anti-women, you're giving him a platform in general that he's going to use to be anti-women,” she said. “It's not one of those things that you can separate. You can't separate Andrew Tate from his anti-women fanatic personna because that's just who he is. There are so many other more positive influencers that people can follow that are all about hustle culture.”

Tate was arrested in Romania on December 29, 2022 for investigation of rape and human trafficking, with his period of detainment just being extended by 30 days by the government. Many of Tate’s alleged activities are just coming to light now, and Tedder is fearful of the great unknown concerning a possible laundry list of crimes.

“With the arrest, we overall know that he’s a bad person. He could say something super motivational, but he still has blood on his hands,” she said. “We don’t know all of what Andrew Tate has done, but we do know some of it. That stuff is really negative, so if that’s already coming out and we didn’t know about it, what else could he have done?”

Tate’s target demographic is young men, and the question that follows is what makes this influencer so consistently attractive to that population?

“I feel like it's the women, the fame, and the money,” Klinger said. “It's almost like he's trying to seem like the movie star badass, and I feel like that's something a lot of kids could look up to. But I feel like he just used that in the wrong way.”

Another anonymous student responded to the survey, shining light on why they engage with Tate’s content.

“He helps give strength to young men in a world where they are thrown away to the wayside,” they said.

Tedder pinpointed another of Tate’s qualities that could be appealing to his viewers.

“The confidence that he says stuff with means that he’s been through it all and ‘this is how you do this and that’,” she said. “His overall confidence is why people follow him. If a guy doesn’t have confidence, it’s almost like they’re not there, so guys see that Andrew Tate is cocky and has money, and they want to be like that.”

Sophomore Sofia Crowley is empathetic towards those with beliefs that contradict hers, but there comes a point when she feels the need to speak up.

“Typically, guys don’t talk to their fathers, or just don’t talk about stuff like this. They look for someone else, and then you have someone like Andrew Tate who’s talking,” she said. “For me, I like listening to people who have different beliefs. I like to see the argument they come up with that they sometimes have to bend over backwards to make. Sometimes people don’t want to listen to you, and that’s fine- they can be ignorant. But if their beliefs start hurting someone, that’s when you have to say something.”

Tedder has witnessed Tate become an outlet for boys to feel comfortable expressing opinions they previously held back.

“I think it makes boys think they’re ‘Top G,’ and they think they’re better than females. Boys have always been like that, but it’s really hard now because they want to say something about it,” she said. “With the way guys are wanting to be on the top, Andrew Tate just gives them an excuse to do so. I hear guys in groups all the time. If you get into a group of guys and you’re listening, it’s really bad.”

Wolf has seen visible changes in how students treat teachers.

“I’ve noticed changes just in the way that people have acted towards some of our female teachers,” they said. “Some of it's like just blatant disrespect, having nothing to do with like sexual harassment or anything that. I see more of this towards my female teachers versus my male teachers.”

Tate was banned from many social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram during the summer of 2022 for violating their policies. Klinger supports restrictions on influencers to a certain extent, but only on those who are spitballing toxic viewpoints.

“I feel like we really do need some restrictions, but it's in these outlying scenarios that they kind of are needed,” he said. “You're not going to just ban someone because ‘oh, you have way too many followers, and your message is getting way too large’. It's the message that they're trying to give off when they have these large audiences, and if you're spreading the wrong message to an audience this big, it really does become an issue.”

When the question of banning someone on the internet comes up, the words ‘free speech’ are inevitably the next to be heard. Though Schneider strongly supports free speech, there are times when they believe in censorship.

“My knee jerk reaction was obviously I would like to have Andrew Tate silenced because I think his views are harmful. As soon as someone tries to actively bring aggression towards another group, I think that their platform should be heavily looked at,” they said. “I think it is also our responsibility as consumers of content to not propagate that and give it attention. I think Andrew Tate would not have blown up as fast as he did if he was not such a reactionary and he did not get all of the left-wing reactions to his content.”

On the dilemma of free speech versus public safety, Crowley sides with protecting those being negatively affected.

“Free speech is protecting you from the government, not protecting you from other people,” she said. “If you’re hurting a whole demographic or half the population and it’s affecting their safety, the person needs to be censored.”

Having peers at school who identify with the fringe group supporting the more extreme viewpoints of influencers such as Tate fosters anxiety in some classroom environments.  .

“It's terrifying that there are people that I go to school with every day, and they have these mindsets about women that, ‘oh, they're just objects’,” Wolf said. “And if they see people as just objects, they don't care about what happened to them. It's just like we're reverting back to the 1800s- we made all of this progress, and they think that it's for the worse. It's kind of crazy seeing it happen at West.”

As the general population becomes awakened to the hate speech and misogynistic views influencers such as Tate spread, Wolf finds it important to remember the widespread impact social media has and the harm it can inflict.

“It's something that I think teachers and people in administration at our school need to become more aware about,” they said. “It is impacting the young girls and young women in our school as well as the teachers, and I think it does have a big part to play in the decline of respect towards teachers. It's much more than just cancel culture. It's people like Andrew Tate impacting our entire country, if not our entire world as a whole, in the way that it spins.”

By Abby Furcy.