Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So I hope everybody is having a fantastic holiday season,
Speaker 1: and I'm actually popping in from my holiday break to
Speaker 1: let y'all know that Christmas came a little bit late
Speaker 1: this year in the form of the news that misogynistic
Speaker 1: grifter Andrew Tate and his brother were detained in connection
Speaker 1: with human trafficking in Romania. And it could not have
Speaker 1: happened in a more delicious way, So let's get into it.
Speaker 1: This week, Andrew Tate tweeted a photo just dripping with insecurity,
Speaker 1: where he was showing off his cars and for some reason,
Speaker 1: probably crippling self esteem issues and a need for negative
Speaker 1: attention and validation, he tagged nineteen year old climate activist
Speaker 1: Greta Thunberg saying, please provide your email address so I
Speaker 1: can send a complete list of my car collection and
Speaker 1: their respective enormous emissions. Greta replied, yes, please do enlighten me.
Speaker 1: You can reach me at small Dick Energy at Ghetta
Speaker 1: life dot com. And everyone on the internet just loved it,
Speaker 1: and Tate was like, I don't care, I'm not bothered,
Speaker 1: and the show just how not bothered he was. He
Speaker 1: made a whole video response of him sitting at a
Speaker 1: table smoking his trademark cigar next to an empty box
Speaker 1: of pizza. Now it's important to know that Tate has
Speaker 1: been under investigation in connection to a human trafficking ring
Speaker 1: for some time. On the very gross men's rights podcast
Speaker 1: Fresh and Fit, Kate explained how he made lots of
Speaker 1: money by soliciting women to make adult content, saying I
Speaker 1: found this little webcam thing and thought this might be
Speaker 1: some money. We started the webcam business from my apartment
Speaker 1: and it just grew and grew. At one point I
Speaker 1: had seventy five women working for me in four locations
Speaker 1: and I was doing six dred thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: Now it's not totally clear if this is the same
Speaker 1: business that led to his detainment, but Romanian prosecutor said
Speaker 1: that four people quote appear to have created an organized
Speaker 1: crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing, and exploiting
Speaker 1: women by forcing them to create pornographic content. So basically
Speaker 1: the allegations are that he was trafficking women and forcing
Speaker 1: them to do online sex work and just pocketing the money.
Speaker 1: CNN reports. The authorities alleged that two of the suspects
Speaker 1: misled the victims quote into believing that they intended to
Speaker 1: enter into a marriage cohabitation relationship while transporting victims to
Speaker 1: Romania and later sexually exploiting them with physical violence and coercion,
Speaker 1: which are very very serious allegations. Now compare that to
Speaker 1: what Andrew Tate wrote on his own website, an archived
Speaker 1: version of which was uncovered by PhD student Christa peters
Speaker 1: hawking his scammy pickup artist coaching business, where he says,
Speaker 1: why am I an expert on all male female interactions?
Speaker 1: I've been running a webcam studio for nearly a decade.
Speaker 1: I've had over seventy girls work for me, and my
Speaker 1: business model is different than of webcam studio owners. Over
Speaker 1: fifty of my employees were actually my girlfriend at the time,
Speaker 1: and of all my girlfriends, none were in the adult
Speaker 1: entertainment industry before they met me. Literally, that was my job.
Speaker 1: My job was to meet a girl, go on a
Speaker 1: few days, sleep with her, test if she's quality, and
Speaker 1: get her to fall in love with me where she
Speaker 1: would do anything I say, then get her out of
Speaker 1: webcam so that we could become rich together. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it does kind of sound like what the Romanian officials
Speaker 1: have alleged he was involved with to me. And Tate
Speaker 1: has been pretty open about the fact that the reason
Speaker 1: that he lives in Romania in the first place is
Speaker 1: because that he figured the Romanians would be less likely
Speaker 1: to charge him for sex crimes. Now, a good rule
Speaker 1: of thumb for anybody is that if you're on the lamb,
Speaker 1: especially from a government, it's probably a good idea to
Speaker 1: keep a low digital profile, Like I probably would not
Speaker 1: be podcasting if I were wanted by the state. But
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate does things differently, and soon after he sent
Speaker 1: his video response to Greta Thunberg, his villa was rated
Speaker 1: and he was detained by authorities in Romania. Police served
Speaker 1: search warrants at five homes and attained four suspects as
Speaker 1: part of the investigation into organized human trafficking and rape. Now,
Speaker 1: many speculated that it was that pizza box visible in
Speaker 1: his video response to Greta Thunberg that tipped off authorities
Speaker 1: to his whereabouts, which, holy crap, the delicious nous I know,
Speaker 1: I know, but I'm sorry to say that. According to CNN,
Speaker 1: Romanian authorities just said that it was social media activity
Speaker 1: that led to his detainment, not really the pizza box specifically,
Speaker 1: But you know what, I don't care. It's Christmas and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have this one. You might remember that Tate
Speaker 1: was banned from pretty much every social media platform this
Speaker 1: past summer, but when Elon Musk took over at Twitter,
Speaker 1: he quickly let Andrew Tate back on. Listen. I know
Speaker 1: that Andrew Tate a grown ass man, and his insatiable
Speaker 1: need to use social media to dunk on a teenager
Speaker 1: leading to his downfall is pretty funny, but we are
Speaker 1: definitely talking about very serious, dangerous allegations. You know, Andrew
Speaker 1: Tate was allegedly taking part in very serious crimes against
Speaker 1: women while also being given a huge platform on social
Speaker 1: media and podcasts to show off all the cars and
Speaker 1: money that he made from allegedly harming women, while being
Speaker 1: able to influence men and boys to want to be
Speaker 1: just like him. Who Is Andrew Tate was the most
Speaker 1: search sentence starting with who is on Google this year,
Speaker 1: and right now there are scores of young men and
Speaker 1: boys defending him. It's scary. And to get into why
Speaker 1: that is, let's revisit the conversation that we had about
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate when he was first de platformed back in August.
Speaker 1: Social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook have finally banned violent,
Speaker 1: misogynistic scam influencer Andrew Tate, and honestly, it's should have
Speaker 1: happened sooner. Now. If you don't know who Andrew Tate is,
Speaker 1: don't worry. He went from being relatively obscured to seemingly
Speaker 1: being everywhere on social media within a few months. Videos
Speaker 1: featuring his name as a hashtag have been viewed over
Speaker 1: thirteen billion times, and before it was shut down, his
Speaker 1: TikTok account had over eleven billion views. He had four
Speaker 1: million Twitter followers, four point seven million Instagram followers, almost
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand YouTube subscribers, and millions and millions of
Speaker 1: clicks and shares across Facebook. So who is Andrew Tate? Well,
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate is kind of like Joe Rogan on steroids.
Speaker 1: Just like Rogan, at one time, Andrew Tate was a
Speaker 1: professional martial artist, and also, like Rogan, Andrew Tate did
Speaker 1: a stint in reality television. Tate was on Big Brother
Speaker 1: in TWI, where he was known for being really respectful
Speaker 1: and thoughtful of others. Oh wait, sorry, just kidding. It
Speaker 1: says here he was actually known for homophobia and violence
Speaker 1: against women after a video surface where he was a
Speaker 1: beating a woman with a belt while screaming at her quote,
Speaker 1: if you ever message another guy, whether we're together or not,
Speaker 1: you're fucking dead. Tate was kicked off Big Brother after
Speaker 1: only being on the show for six days. Andrew Tate's
Speaker 1: podcast is called take Speech, and it's basically exactly what
Speaker 1: you think it is. He's part of what we call
Speaker 1: the Man of Sphere, a loosely connected ecosystem of online
Speaker 1: websites and influencers that traffic in misogyny and racism on
Speaker 1: places like four Chan and Reddit. If you listen to
Speaker 1: our episode with Laura Bates, a researcher and writer who
Speaker 1: went undercover in the Man of Sphere to research her
Speaker 1: book Men Who Hate Women, then you know exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. So Andrew Tate's whole thing is these
Speaker 1: clips of him speaking on his podcast wearing sunglasses and
Speaker 1: doors you know, like you do, and smoking a cigar
Speaker 1: while he basically says the most violent, sexist nonsense that
Speaker 1: makes him sound like an alpha male like. Here is
Speaker 1: his take on why he is anti breakfast. This is
Speaker 1: an actual quote from him. I don't have food in
Speaker 1: the mornings. I don't like the idea of breakfast, waking
Speaker 1: up from sleep instantly with available food that you didn't
Speaker 1: have to hunt and kill. Breakfast breathes arrogance and laziness.
Speaker 1: I will not eat until work has been done. Instead,
Speaker 1: I start my day with hunger and memories. My path
Speaker 1: to the top wasn't a straight line. There's been bumps
Speaker 1: in the road, tears, blood. I sit and remember the
Speaker 1: worst times of my life, the pain and the heartache.
Speaker 1: Some mornings, if I try, I can almost cry. I
Speaker 1: take all that anguish and pain and then add a
Speaker 1: little nicotine and caffeine to set my blood on fire,
Speaker 1: and I enter the world ready to win life or die.
Speaker 1: While I'm trying, angry men siege nations. I don't have
Speaker 1: time for cheerios. The universe will pay me what she
Speaker 1: owes me all the money and power I deserve. So yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds pretty healthy. Definitely sounds like someone who is going
Speaker 1: to help these start to the day and encouraging others
Speaker 1: to do the same. Let's say a quick break center back.
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate's brand of hyper violence, toxic hyper masculinity, and
Speaker 1: misogyny basically says that women are property of men. This
Speaker 1: is something that he's actually said, and he advocates for
Speaker 1: men using violence and relationships. He outright said that if
Speaker 1: a woman ever asked him about cheating, he would physically
Speaker 1: attack her. In a really good piece for Grid, reporter
Speaker 1: Christian Thorsburg spoke to Josh Ross, a political sociologist and
Speaker 1: senior research fellow at Deacon University in Melbourne, who says
Speaker 1: that Tate represents a dramatic shift taking place in online misogyny,
Speaker 1: moving beyond the sexualization and dismissal of women which much
Speaker 1: of Tate's material promotes, to also encouraging gendered hate and violence.
Speaker 1: So basically, it's not just men are better than women,
Speaker 1: it's men are better than women, and therefore men should
Speaker 1: be able to use violence in service of establishing and
Speaker 1: maintaining that hierarchy. And this is even more troubling when
Speaker 1: you consider that the majority of Tate's audience are young
Speaker 1: men and boys. Teachers have been writing about how Andrew
Speaker 1: Tate's popularity with boys has been creating problems and disturbances
Speaker 1: in their classrooms. So Tate is popular with boys, but
Speaker 1: he's also really popular with young men who are just
Speaker 1: starting to navigate their way into young adulthood. Going back
Speaker 1: to Rus from that grid piece, Ruce also said, if
Speaker 1: you want to know where Andrew Tate is gaining traction,
Speaker 1: it's more likely to be the white collar sector. Among
Speaker 1: educated younger men who work out at gyms on the
Speaker 1: weekend or after work. Younger men are more likely to
Speaker 1: hold anti women attitudes in terms of women's rights, that
Speaker 1: women's rights has gone too far. So on top of
Speaker 1: all this, Andrew Tate is also a scammer. Let's get
Speaker 1: that straight right away. He used to operate a porn
Speaker 1: webcam business with his brother that his brother outright described
Speaker 1: as quote a big scam, But that scam is actually
Speaker 1: the least scammy scam that Andrew Tate is involved in,
Speaker 1: because his whole thing, his whole ethos, his whole identity
Speaker 1: is a scam. So I've actually written about the ways
Speaker 1: that misogynistic podcasters and content creators and influencers who make
Speaker 1: up the manosphere are all basically just scamming. They prey
Speaker 1: on men and boys with low media literacy who may
Speaker 1: feel lonely. They get into their heads and convince them
Speaker 1: to send over money. Podcasts like Fitting Fresh, the late
Speaker 1: Kevin Samuel's they all basically convinced young men and boys
Speaker 1: to send them lots and lots of money or give
Speaker 1: them lots and lots of engagement in service of learning
Speaker 1: how to become high value men. I actually wrote a
Speaker 1: piece on this for the Nation, talking about the Fresh
Speaker 1: and Fit podcast, which you can read in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Let's gay a quick break center back, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about Andrew Tad's scam. Specifically, it is called Hustlers University,
Speaker 1: where for the low low cost of fifty dollars a month,
Speaker 1: men and boys can learn about cryptocurrency from three guys
Speaker 1: named Michael, Adam, and Daniel no less name given, and
Speaker 1: learn about just the general concept of quote freelancing from
Speaker 1: Dylan and Colston no less name given. Also, given that
Speaker 1: Andrew Tad's audience mostly includes young men and boys, don't worry.
Speaker 1: According to Hustlers Universities, frequently asked questions it is not
Speaker 1: a problem if you are not a legal adult, because
Speaker 1: they have plenty of young guys inside of Hustlers University
Speaker 1: who are below eighteen and are pulling in several thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a month, do you have access to the internet.
Speaker 1: That's all you need. By the way, this is a
Speaker 1: little bit picky, but I just have to say it.
Speaker 1: On the Hustlers University website frequently ask questions, it says
Speaker 1: that you do not need any money to start because
Speaker 1: most of the Hustlers University students are doing freelance work,
Speaker 1: and that freelance work does not require any money to do.
Speaker 1: Take it from an actual, honest to god freelancer, this
Speaker 1: is just incorrect financial advice. You absolutely need money to freelance.
Speaker 1: And when their tax bill comes, I hope the people
Speaker 1: who were told that they need zero dollars to freelance
Speaker 1: are not surprised when the government expects him to pay
Speaker 1: self employment taxes. So again, you can see how he's
Speaker 1: kind of praying on people who might not have a
Speaker 1: lot of financial literacy or media literacy. And it's awful.
Speaker 1: And it gets worse because guess what. The entire thing
Speaker 1: is basically a pyramid scheme. Like most pyramid schemes, the
Speaker 1: courses aren't really the thing. The thing is getting others
Speaker 1: to sign up for the courses. Students of the program
Speaker 1: got a commission for convincing other dupes to join via
Speaker 1: affiliate marketing. So just like lu La Row and every
Speaker 1: other MLM scam that somebody from your high school message
Speaker 1: you about on Facebook who was all like, hey, hon,
Speaker 1: have you ever thought about starting your own business? I
Speaker 1: think you would really slay at it. It's a scam,
Speaker 1: and honestly probably a lucrative one. According to The Daily Beast,
Speaker 1: the program had some a hundred and nine thousand members
Speaker 1: before its closure. And this is actually why you might
Speaker 1: know who Tate is because Tate specifically told his students
Speaker 1: to flood social media with videos of his content to
Speaker 1: promote his scam university. According to Hope Not Hate, a
Speaker 1: UK based advocacy group that uses research to challenge mistrust
Speaker 1: and racism, Tate tells his supporters they can earn significant
Speaker 1: sums by sharing his videos. In one podcast, he claimed
Speaker 1: that a sixteen year old hustler University student was making
Speaker 1: forty five thousand pounds a month from publishing his clips
Speaker 1: on the TikTok, which is basically how he gamified the program.
Speaker 1: Even though he's banned from TikTok. His content is still
Speaker 1: really prevalent there because his students just flood the space
Speaker 1: with his content. And I think he definitely is someone
Speaker 1: who needs social media. He's just game in the algorithms
Speaker 1: because he knows that algorithms specifically boost inflammatory content. They
Speaker 1: will always give content that is inflammatory or divisive more engagement.
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate was a banned from Twitter back in seventeen
Speaker 1: over a thread commenting on Harvey Weinstein where he said quote,
Speaker 1: if you put yourself in a position to be raped,
Speaker 1: you must bear some responsibility. I'm not saying it's okay
Speaker 1: you got raped. And TikTok took down Andrew Tate's account
Speaker 1: for breaking its policies regarding quote content that attacks, threatens,
Speaker 1: incites violence against for otherwise to humanize as an individual
Speaker 1: or group based on attributes including sex. This is what
Speaker 1: a TikTok spokesperson told The Washington Post. He was also
Speaker 1: kicked off Facebook and Instagram for violating the rules around
Speaker 1: dangerous organizations and individuals. But as always, let's not give
Speaker 1: the platforms to you much credit. Pretty much, whenever they
Speaker 1: decide to remove somebody who was dangerous from their platform,
Speaker 1: or make any kind of policy change like this, it's
Speaker 1: typically because of the work of organizers who have been
Speaker 1: pushing them behind the scenes, and this time it's no different.
Speaker 1: Hope not Hate filed a petition for platforms to drop
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate and has been monitoring him for years. So
Speaker 1: great job to all the organizers who did the work
Speaker 1: behind the scenes to make this happen. But also what
Speaker 1: we learned from how Alex Jones uses Facebook. You might
Speaker 1: remember that Mark Zuckerberg personally intervened so that even after
Speaker 1: Alex Jones was banned from Facebook, he carved out a
Speaker 1: loophole so that other people could still post his content
Speaker 1: on the platform. Even though Tate has been banned from
Speaker 1: these platforms, it might not actually even really matter if
Speaker 1: his whole thing is having other people, his students, post
Speaker 1: his content on his behalf. And I also should just
Speaker 1: probably note that in April, The Daily Beasts reported that
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate's house in Romania was rated as part of
Speaker 1: an investigation into crime of human trafficking in rape. Tate
Speaker 1: lives in Romania, and in a now deleted YouTube video,
Speaker 1: he said that the reason why he moved there is
Speaker 1: because Romanian police were less likely to pursue sexual assault allegations.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, you tell me and to me. Andrew
Speaker 1: Tate represents the mainstreaming of really violent, dangerous ideas and
Speaker 1: rhetoric and those things, you know, not just being fringe
Speaker 1: but flooding popular social media apps like TikTok. Tate has
Speaker 1: also treated like a thought leader. He's given a huge
Speaker 1: platform by popular podcasts like bar Stool, which gives him
Speaker 1: a huge audience of a young man and boys and
Speaker 1: hosts who really don't push back on any of the
Speaker 1: dangerous things that he's saying. And overall, like I've said
Speaker 1: time and time again, these people are all scam artists.
Speaker 1: They do not care about their audience. They do not
Speaker 1: care about the men and boys that they're talking to,
Speaker 1: They do not care about the students of their so
Speaker 1: called universities. To them, these men and boys and their
Speaker 1: pain and loneliness and anger is just a that can
Speaker 1: be exploited and weaponized to make more cash. It is
Speaker 1: the most cynical, exploitative ship in the world and it works. Listen.
Speaker 1: To be clear, I am not against people asking tough
Speaker 1: questions and having the thorny media conversations about relationships sex
Speaker 1: and gender. In fact, I believe that we need more
Speaker 1: people spearheading those conversations in meaningful and thoughtful ways. But
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate is not actually interested in men and boys
Speaker 1: having healthy relationships, because people who are in healthy relationships
Speaker 1: do not send over fifty dollars a month to a
Speaker 1: charlatan to teach them how to be high value successful men.
Speaker 1: People like Tate need to keep their audience of men
Speaker 1: and boys angry. They need to stoke their feelings of
Speaker 1: loneliness and inadequacy and anchor and tell them to keep
Speaker 1: pointing those feelings at women so they keep shelling over
Speaker 1: more money. So this is my call to everyone listening.
Speaker 1: If you have a young man or boy in your life,
Speaker 1: talk to them about what kind of content they're consuming,
Speaker 1: talk to them about what they think about women and girls,
Speaker 1: and you honestly might be surprised. And it really really matters.
Speaker 1: The implications are huge. Here's how Laura Bates, author of
Speaker 1: Men Who Hate Women, put it during our interview. We've
Speaker 1: never really seen it because we are at the kind
Speaker 1: of hovering on the edge of the first real generation
Speaker 1: coming of age who have lived their whole lives on
Speaker 1: social media. We have this kind of unique political moment
Speaker 1: that never really gets picked up on this. I find
Speaker 1: it wild that we're living at this moment in history
Speaker 1: has never happened before and will never happen again, and
Speaker 1: yet it's never really discussed where a generation of non
Speaker 1: digital natives is parenting and educating a generation of digital natives,
Speaker 1: and there is this chasm there, this huge gap in
Speaker 1: culture and understanding of what their world is like, what
Speaker 1: the day to day landscape of their online world is
Speaker 1: like amongst parents who grew up in a pre Internet age,
Speaker 1: and that generation will becoming of age, and what will
Speaker 1: that look like when our political representatives are being drawn
Speaker 1: from a generation who have literally grown up with the
Speaker 1: sheer daily bombardment of racism and misogyny and transphobia that
Speaker 1: comes with living your life on the Internet in the
Speaker 1: way that young people do today. And I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll know what that looks like until we get there,
Speaker 1: and I think when we do, it will be a shock.
Speaker 1: But for now, Andrew Tate, good riddance. And if this
Speaker 1: means I have to see one last video of a
Speaker 1: guy wearing sunglasses inside and smoking a cigar on my
Speaker 1: for you page, I'll take it. If you're looking for
Speaker 1: ways to support the show, check out our March store
Speaker 1: at tangodi dot com Slash Store. Got a story about
Speaker 1: an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi,
Speaker 1: You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi
Speaker 1: dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was
Speaker 1: created by me bridgetad. It's a production of I Heeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Motto is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah