Late into the night on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022, Romanian authorities arrested social media influencer Emory Andrew Tate. Among his charges were six counts of human trafficking and one count of rape. 

   The arrest concludes the latest chapter in the former kickboxer’s blistering rise to stardom. For most of the 2010s, “Andrew Tate” was a name only known in a few niche martial arts circles; in 2022, he was the 8th most Googled man on the planet. Give Mr. Tate a search of your own, and you’ll learn most of what you need to know — in image after image, the British American poses in front of expensive cars and floor-to-ceiling mirrors, six-pack flexed. He sports square aviators and a Cuban cigar everywhere he goes. He speaks extensively about all the beautiful women he has lined up. Allegedly, he has a dozen kids.  

   Though Tate did not invent the straight-talking machismo womanizer, he did bring it to the 21st century. When you ask someone how they know about Tate, you’re bound to hear one answer: TikTok. Despite being banned from the platform for months now, videos of  Tate are omnipresent. Hundreds of “fan accounts” have amassed millions of views reposting old clips of interviews and podcasts, often by taking the most derogatory snippets from Tate’s already-edgy commentary.

   In between braggadocious tirades about money and women (he has more than you), he promotes “Hustlers University,” his online course that charges subscribers $50/month to learn about “modern wealth creation methods.” As part of the platform,  Tate gives his “students” an affiliate link — if they can entice non-members to use their link to sign-up, they get a commission. Thus, prospecting marketeers inundate social media sites with clips of Tate and their accompanying affiliate links, unabashedly placing them in the description of every video. For Tate, these accounts are less parasitic and more symbiotic — they’re the engine driving his brand and an easy way to circumvent censorship. He has outsourced all his promotion to smaller creators — he doesn’t even need his own account anymore (which was banned after a slew of comments like “women have no innate responsibility or honor,” anyways). All he has to do, now, is focus on being “Andrew Tate.” And he does a great job.

   Navier Quezada (12), like many, found Tate through his network of affiliate-link peddling fan accounts. Quezada reported being “uncomfortable” with Tate’s objectification of women — but concedes that the man is entertaining. Quezada’s stance is not uncommon, and it represents a bigger problem with Tate: he’s just fun to watch. He’s charismatic, blunt, and, above all else, witty; society loves a playboy. It’s tempting to tune out the bad — to dismiss  Tate as a dopey internet character with a penchant to say outrageous things. Blindsided by the absurdity of it all, we rarely take a step back to examine who he really is.

   Andrew Tate is a scammer.  His “university” bears eerie resemblance to a pyramid scheme and offers little of genuine instructional value. All of his “wealth creation methods” like eCommerce, cryptocurrency trading, and digital marketing evoke the textbook “get rich quick” scheme. No matter what subject you pursue in his university, you can find a free comprehensive guide online that teaches you more than Tate ever could. 

   Andrew Tate is a bad role model; he endlessly promotes vanity and the pursuit of money as the ultimate end. In one video, he goes as far as saying that all you need in life are the “simple things” to be happy: “a 75 million dollar yacht, 30 hot women, hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank…be smart and tall and gorgeous and the most Googled man in the world.” One must wonder how happy a single 36 year old who calls himself “gorgeous” can be. He 

lives an immature conception of what a fulfilling life is, flying in the face of every traditional value he claims to uphold. Worse still, the people Tate reaches are often at a time in their life where strong male role models are critically needed. 

   Reese Martinez (12) can speak to this; she first found Tate after she spoke to her “younger brother about it.” She noted that she “hadn’t heard much about him before that,” evidence that Tate’s target demographic skews towards adolescents. Even if you haven’t heard about him, the young men in your life definitely have. 

   Above all else, however, Andrew Tate is a misogynist. When he argues that women belong to their husbands or jokes that women can’t drive, he’s not just being incendiary for the sake of being incendiary; he’s trying to set gender roles back 100 years. Without a doubt, sometimes Tate gets things right — when he swears that “if someone touched my woman, I would stand up against 10 men and fight to protect her!”, or that he’s a “massive advocate for love,” you can’t help but agree. But you can’t take the good without the bad. And there’s a lot of bad, because if the allegations are true…

 Andrew Tate is a rapist.