There are many influential people on social media whose ideas often impact their viewers.
One influencer, who’s known for his controversial opinions, is Andrew Cobra Tate, whose fanbase is mainly young boys who are heavily influenced by his words and actions.
Tate is a 35 year old man who is commonly known for his views on women, his sexist comments, and being an alleged sex offender. But he originally became famous from his online school, Hustlers University, a school he founded to teach people how to make money.
He began making many appearances on podcasts but was removed from most of them after a video of him beating a woman in 2016 was leaked. He defended himself by saying it was consensual and the woman requested him to do it.
Tate’s Twitter account was suspended in 2017 because of his tweets describing that “victims of rape and sexual harassment should ‘bear responsibility’ for assault,” according to Forbes.
Tate’s statements are seen as concerning to a point where many people who don’t agree with his ideas believe that younger boys, whose minds and opinions are just being shaped, are agreeing with how Tate says he treats women. Those who disagree with Tate believe he is convincing the younger generation that this behavior is acceptable.
Like many people, senior Sione Hingano takes issue with Tate’s opinions on relationships.
“I feel like in a relationship men and women can work together, but he emphasizes how men take a lot of the dominant side. I can also agree with a little bit of that, but he’s just really extreme,” Hingano said. “Like one time he said if your girl gets OnlyFans, since she’s yours, you can get all the profits, which I disagree with.”
Sophomore Enguun Munkhnairamdal added, “Just knowing that there are guys like Andrew Tate out there is scary. I have seen people, especially guys my age on TikTok, agreeing with his hurtful viewpoints on women.”
Tate’s statements have been pointed out to be hypocritical and sexist. He often uses Christianity as logic for his beliefs, but many people find this as a way of him forcing his religion on others.
“Read the Bible, every single man has multiple wives, not a single woman had multiple husbands,” Tate said on the BFFs podcast hosted by influencer Josh Richards. “It’s against God’s will. It’s disgusting.”
Some people are defending Tate by saying that he’s empowering boys to show off their masculinity and his extreme statements are just jokes.
“He just says a lot of BS and it’s entertaining,” junior Bobby Singh said. “I think it’s obviously satirical. He said if his son was a nerd he would challenge him to the death. I think anyone can tell that he’s over-exaggerating.”
Some people are more neutral, and the major reason for this is because they see that below all the extreme jokes, his intentions seem to be to empower the youth. Even though his intentions may be good, his words often send the wrong message, especially his sexist ones against women.
“I agree that the man should provide and be able to protect,” freshman Jack Wasley said. “I don’t agree with being able to cheat and hit women. That’s just horrible.”
Richards tried to show his viewers the double standard of when women say phrases like “All men are the same” they get praised, but when Tate does it he gets flamed.
“I’m not trying to defend him or [anything]. I’m just saying that there’s definitely both sides,” Richards said in his podcast. “Like, there’s definitely female creators that are telling females ‘men are trash’ and they’re OK to do that.”
Tate used platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook to spread his ideas, but was recently banned from all of them for violating their policies on hate speech and misogyny. Fans say he shouldn’t have been banned because everyone should be able to voice their opinion.
Even though Tate has many supporters, many people that know of him find his viewpoints aggressive and are worried how influential he is and how young teens will be affected by his controversial views.