disillusioned young men.
Andrew Tate banned from Instagram, Facebook and now TikTok. How an outspoken critic of feminism and enabler of male self assertion came to appeal to legions of disillusioned young men.
One of the internet’s most vocal allies of the men’s movement, Andrew Tate, was earlier this week banned from Meta‘s Facebook and Instagram platform for his supposed ‘dangerous’ brand of misogynism.
Tate, a former kickboxer and reality TV star, who often affects a kind of self parody with his exaggerated poise and ‘masculine’ muscle bound demeanor, first came to prominence after appearing on the TV show Big Brother in 2016.
It was there that the former 4 times world kick-boxing champion and son of a world class champion player was removed from the series after a video of him beating his ex girlfriend with a belt outside the show surfaced. Tate would defend the incident, insisting it that it was all a bit of playful fun.
‘I’m still friends with her and she’s in the UK with me now. I would never hit a woman,’ Tate told the Sun at the time.
Less than a year later, Tate would face backlash after posting on Twitter that women belong in the home and that rape victims ‘bear responsibility’ for their attack – leading to Tate being permanently banned from the platform.
bittersweet feelings about andrew tate’s instagram ban pic.twitter.com/j1VPd8ojhg
— matt (@mattxiv) August 19, 2022
Filling a vacuum of disillusioned, discarded young men
Rather than disappearing, Tate soon after found himself courting disillusioned young men, many of whom, with the advent of online dating and rampant hypergamy, as sexually liberated and self sufficient women armed with college degrees only now sought to bond with the top 10-20% of men, increasingly found themselves priced out of the sex and dating market.
Men were blamed for toxic masculinity, told that they failed to measure up to liberated women’s rising standards and expectations of what a ‘good’ mate brought to the table, while also retreating to their video games and adult online voyeurism.
Sensing a vacuum of disenfranchised men to sell to, young lonely men soon become the self described Alpha chad legions of online followers – allowing Tate to amass a purported personal fortune of over $20M, upselling men’s self improvement courses and ‘income success’ opportunities.
By now, Tate had become ubiquitous on social media and ‘impossible to avoid’, with the ‘internet entrepreneur’ receiving ever constant criticism for his controversial views on feminism, patriarchy, misogyny and sexism.
Views that increasingly appealed to a vortex of young men, who seemingly had been discarded by society and with one recent report finding that more men remaining sexless – with up to a third of men under the age of 30 never having experienced physical intimacy with women.
By the time of his ouster from Meta, the mega chad had amassed more than 4.7 million followers on Instagram. Which is to suggest, that as controversial and toxic as his views were, Tate was nevertheless touching on a raw nerve amongst men, who increasingly found themselves being vilified, humiliated and rejected by the opposite sex and even society at large.
It was only days later, that TikTok followed suit, with the video social media platform banning Tate’s official account on their platform, along with the streaming service saying it was working to remove content related to him that violates guidelines.
Banning Tate wont solve the disempowerment so many men feel in today’s society
Videos using hashtags related to Tate have been seen more than 12.7bn times according to UK advocacy group Hope Not Hate, which called Tate a ‘dangerous misogynist’.
While one can debate the degree of toxicity emanating from Tate’s platforms, and whether exacting censorship is the right way to go, the elephant in the room continues to be, why and how so many young came to follow the outspoken personality and how his messages of self empowerment and hyper male virility appealed to legions of young men.
Banning Andrew Tate, may eradicate impolite talk in the schoolyard and the establishment’s exultation that men ‘just have to man up,’ – while failing to address the fact that so many men today feel betrayed and unable to measure up to a bill of goods that so many men in prior generations had never had to contend with.
Which is to suggest, it wont be long before someone else in the manosphere steps up and replaces the vacuum left by Tate’s abrupt departure from social media, even in death.
