Andrew Tate during his kickboxing career. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons user 12u.

By Jack McGill

Andrew Tate, an English-American reality tv contestant, ex-kickboxer, entrepreneur, and now an ex-internet personality, became a major figure in social media this past summer. He rose in popularity quickly due to his polarizing opinions, attracting attention mainly through the social media app TikTok, which, along with many other social media platforms, banned him on August 22.

Before Tate’s rise to social media fame, he had been a successful kickboxer, with a record of 43 wins and nine losses throughout his whole career. Tate’s father, Emory Tate, also a controversial figure, was a very successful professional chess player. Tate also appeared in the 2016 British version of the reality show Big Brother, but his time on the show did not last long, due to various controversies. He was kicked off of the show due to a video coming out showing him physically abusing a woman, as well as news of “homophobic and racist tweets.” 

Tate had been relatively unknown to the mainstream media up until this summer, when he started posting videos of himself on social media, describing his thoughts on women and other social and political topics. His opinions spread rapidly through TikTok and Instagram posts, and he would appear on podcasts and talk shows on media services such as Twitch. 

Sometimes his takes on certain topics, while trafficking in stereotypes, were amusing and relatively harmless. For example, he once stated, “Real men have dogs.” He would go on to explain how dogs are superior to cats, and how a dog loves you, but your cat does not. 

Tate’s messages about women, however, are typically misogynistic, old-fashioned ideologies. He believes that women should obey and submit to their partners. He believes that men should be in complete control and command in a relationship. He states that he doesn’t believe that men and women are equal. On a podcast with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, another internet celebrity, he talked about how he would not fly in a plane knowing the pilot was a woman, due to him believing that a woman would not be as capable of flying a plane as a man. He also has controversial opinions on other social issues like depression, stating, “Depression isn’t real.” These misogynistic statements and opinions conflict with TikTok’s community guidelines and eventually would be the reason he was banned from most social media platforms.

Tate’s rise to fame and prominence in social media is no coincidence. Before this summer, he had not been much of a celebrity until he started his affiliate program called Hustlers University. This program was Andrew and his brother Tristan’s attempt to tell men how to be superior, but in actuality, served to boost and spread the brothers’ ideologies and make them popular in the mainstream media. When users signed up for Hustlers University, the Tate brothers would ask users to make social media accounts and post videos of the them. The brothers also told their millions of followers to do the same. Boys as young as the age of 13 would be manipulated to create hundreds of accounts to spread his messages. This method worked extremely well, boosting Tate to gain 4.5 million followers on Instagram, 600,000 subscribers on Youtube, and videos with his hashtag getting around 14 billion views on TikTok. However, Tate shut down Hustlers University after his ban, stopping the spread of his media for the meantime.

Even though Tate is known as a social danger, following his ban from social media, he attempted to make up for his mistakes by establishing The Tate Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to helping both men and women. Although this is a positive attempt to give back to the community, his offensive rhetoric still makes him a controversial figure.

Featured image courtesy of TikTok.