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: Social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook have finally banned violent,
Speaker 1: misogynistic scam influencer Andrew Taine, and honestly, it should have
Speaker 1: happened sooner now. If you don't know who Andrew Tait is,
Speaker 1: don't worry. He went from being relatively obscure 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 where he was known for being really respectful and
Speaker 1: thoughtful of others. Oh wait, sorry, just kidding. It says
Speaker 1: here he was actually known for homophobia and violence against
Speaker 1: women after a video surface where he was beating a
Speaker 1: woman with a belt while screaming at her quote, if
Speaker 1: 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 mano Sphere to research her book
Speaker 1: Men Who Hate Women, then you know exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. So Andrew Tate's whole thing is these clips
Speaker 1: of him speaking on his podcast wearing sunglasses and doors
Speaker 1: you know, like you do, and smoking a cigar while
Speaker 1: he basically says the most violent, sexist nonsense that makes
Speaker 1: him sound like an alpha male like. Here is his
Speaker 1: take on why he is anti breakfast. This is an
Speaker 1: actual quote from him. I don't have food in the mornings.
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea of breakfast, waking up from
Speaker 1: sleep instantly with available food that you didn't have to
Speaker 1: hunt and kill. Breakfast breathes arrogance and laziness. I will
Speaker 1: not eat until work has been done. Instead, I start
Speaker 1: my day with hunger and memories. My path to the
Speaker 1: top wasn't a straight line. There's been bumps in the road, tears, blood.
Speaker 1: I sit and remember the worst times of my life,
Speaker 1: the pain and the heartache. Some mornings, if I try,
Speaker 1: I can almost cry. I take all that anguish and
Speaker 1: pain and then add a little nicotine and caffeine to
Speaker 1: set my blood on fire, and I enter the world
Speaker 1: ready to win life or die. While I'm trying, angry
Speaker 1: men siege nations. I don't have time for cheerios. The
Speaker 1: universe will pay me what she owes me, all the
Speaker 1: money and power I deserve. So yes, sounds pretty healthy.
Speaker 1: Definitely sounds like someone who is going to help the
Speaker 1: start to the day and encouraging others to do the same.
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 gym's 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 of this, Andrew Tate is also a scammer. Let's
Speaker 1: get that straight right away. He used to operate a
Speaker 1: porn webcam business with his brother that his brother outright
Speaker 1: described as quote a big scam, But that scam is
Speaker 1: actually 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 Manno sphere are all basically just scamming. They
Speaker 1: prey on men and boys with low media literacy who
Speaker 1: may feel lonely, get into their heads and convince them
Speaker 1: to send over money. Podcasts like Fit and Fresh, the
Speaker 1: late Kevin Samuel's they all basically convinced young men and
Speaker 1: boys to send them lots and lots of money or
Speaker 1: give them lots and lots of engagement in service of
Speaker 1: learning how to become high value men. I actually wrote
Speaker 1: a piece on this for the Nation, talking about the
Speaker 1: Fresh and Fit podcast, which you can read in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Let's take a quick break center back, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about Andrew Tad's scam. Specifically, it is called
Speaker 1: Hustlers University, where for the lolo cost of fifty dollars
Speaker 1: a month, men and boys can learn about cryptocurrency from
Speaker 1: three guys they Michael, Adam, and Daniel no less name given,
Speaker 1: and learn about just the general concept of quote freelancing
Speaker 1: from Dylan and Colston no last name given. Also, given
Speaker 1: that Andrew Tad's audience mostly includes young men and boys,
Speaker 1: don't worry. According to Hustlers Universities, frequently asked questions it
Speaker 1: is not a problem if you are not a legal adult,
Speaker 1: because they have plenty of young guys inside of Hustlers
Speaker 1: University who are below eighteen and are pulling in several
Speaker 1: thousand 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 nipicky, 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. There's
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 too much credit. Pretty much, whenever they decide
Speaker 1: to remove somebody who is dangerous from their platform or
Speaker 1: make any kind of policy change like this, it's typically
Speaker 1: because of the work of organizers who have been pushing
Speaker 1: 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 Beast reported that
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate's house in Romania was rated as part of
Speaker 1: an investigation into crimes 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 university. Ease to them, these men and boys and
Speaker 1: their pain and loneliness and anger is just a tool
Speaker 1: that can be exploited and weaponized to make more cash.
Speaker 1: It is the most cynical, exploitative ship in the world
Speaker 1: and it works. Listen. To be clear, I am not
Speaker 1: against people asking tough questions and having the thorny media
Speaker 1: conversations about relationships, sex and gender. In fact, I believe
Speaker 1: that we need more people spearheading those conversations in meaningful
Speaker 1: and thoughtful ways. But Andrew Tate is not actually interested
Speaker 1: in men and boys having healthy relationships, because people who
Speaker 1: are in healthy relationships do not send over fifty dollars
Speaker 1: a month to a charlatan to teach them how to
Speaker 1: be high value successful men. People like Tate need to
Speaker 1: keep their audience of men and boys angry. They need
Speaker 1: to stoke their feelings of loneliness and inadequacy and anger
Speaker 1: and tell them to keep pointing those feelings at women
Speaker 1: so they keep shelling over more money. So this is
Speaker 1: my call to everyone listening. If you have a young
Speaker 1: man or boy in your life, talk to them about
Speaker 1: what kind of content they're consuming, talk to them about
Speaker 1: what they think about women and girls, and you honestly
Speaker 1: might be surprised. And it really really matters. The implications
Speaker 1: are huge. Here's so Laura Bates, author of Men Who
Speaker 1: Hate Women, put it during our interview. We've never really
Speaker 1: seen it because we are at the kind of hovering
Speaker 1: on the edge of the first real generation coming of
Speaker 1: age who have lived their whole lives on social media.
Speaker 1: We have this kind of unique political moment that never
Speaker 1: really gets picked up on this. I find it wild
Speaker 1: that we're living at this moment in history has never
Speaker 1: happened before and will never happen again, and yet it's
Speaker 1: never really discussed where a generation of non digital natives
Speaker 1: is parenting and educating a generation of digital natives, and
Speaker 1: there is this chasm, there, this huge gap in culture
Speaker 1: and understanding of what their world is like, what the
Speaker 1: day to day landscape of their online world is like
Speaker 1: amongst parents who grew up in a pre Internet age,
Speaker 1: and that general Asian will becoming of age, and what
Speaker 1: will that look like when our political representatives are being
Speaker 1: drawn from a generation who have literally grown up with
Speaker 1: the sheer daily bombardment of racism and misogyny and transphobia
Speaker 1: that comes with living your life on the Internet in
Speaker 1: the way that young people do today. And I don't
Speaker 1: think 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 riddens. And if this
Speaker 1: means I have to see you one last video of
Speaker 1: a guy wearing sunglasses inside and smoking a cigar on
Speaker 1: my for you page, I'll take it. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for ways to support the show, check out our work
Speaker 1: store at tangdi dot com. Slash store. Got a story
Speaker 1: about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to
Speaker 1: say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangodi
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode
Speaker 1: at tandi dot com. There Are No Girls on the
Speaker 1: Internet was created by me Brigita. It's a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer
Speaker 1: and sound engineer. Michael Amata was our contributing producer. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow,
Speaker 1: rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app,
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