Intelligent. Knowledgable. Articulate. Masculine to the max. The physique and grace of an athlete, the timing of a standup comic, and the sex appeal of screen action hero. Brains and brawn: a caramel Dolph Lundgren.
So much about Tate is obvious. This should make him easy to describe, but once I began trying, I found it difficult. Andrew Tate is a complex man. He inspires both admiration and repugnance, often in the same video and occasionally at the same moment. He can say something so disgusting that you want to turn him off, but a moment later, you find yourself willing to entertain his vision, at least up to a point. Watching a video of Tate ordering an imaginary off-camera woman to “Cook my dinner, Bitch,” I can hear the feet of a fuming feminist charging up to battle the King of Toxic Masculinity. But I don’t kid myself, either. If I were fifty years younger, I would stand in line for the chance to cook Tate’s dinner.
Just tell me, where are they? Where do such magnificent masculine beings walk this earth today?”
There must be thousands of Andrew Tate videos on YouTube alone. Some of them were posted as long as a decade ago, but huge numbers of them appeared in this past year alone, when Tate became the most Googled man on the planet. There are dozens of new ones daily, full-length podcasts and quick “shorts” and everything in between. How can there be so much material about someone who is banned from the platform? Well, because there are people who want to see it.
Pick ten videos at random, and Tate will make you laugh, curse, empathize, and reflect by turns. Or sometimes even all at once. He has no filter, and no topics are beyond him. Masculinity. The inferiority of women. Sparkling water. Putin and Ukraine. Cars. Disease and masks and vaccines. Combatting depression. Parenting. Boxing. Push-ups. His many personal achievements. His modesty.
He seems to be several people at once. An outlandish preacher, bellowing into the camera. An itinerant storyteller, sitting in a parked car or wandering on to the set of a podcast. A commentator on contemporary society and politics, the demise of the West, and the brilliant future of Dubai. An expert on business and micro and macro economics, one who can explain things in terms even a math-phobic listener can digest.
The man understands the value of narrative, metaphor, and precise language. He could easily have been a university lecturer or your favorite high school teacher or the best coach in the history of athletics. I watched and listened as Tate explained to Mike Thurston that the left hook to the body was more effective than one to the face. Suddenly, I recalled hearing a taciturn Ken Norton saying, “If the body goes down, the head goes with it.” And I felt an urge to add boxing gloves to my Amazon shopping list. Tate just made it so interesting.
For as long as YouTube allows it, the video described below is at the foot of this post.
Storytelling. The very first Andrew Tate video I recall seeing was already several years old as I watched. A kickboxing-aged Andrew, seated in a parked car, is holding forth about the difference between discipline in Black and white households. He references his “Black aunt,” but I cannot see any African American features in his lightly stubbled face, perhaps because the technical quality of the clip is crude. I was distracted both by his accent, which seems almost-but-not-quite American, and by trying to work out how he might have a Black aunt. Maybe a woman who married his uncle?
Narrative. But his narrative grabs my attention before I can nail down his facial features or his vowels. He’s a child at his cousin’s house, playing with other small fry and messing up a room as they go. The aunt enters, “pissed,” and proceeds to give everyone present an ass whooping, completely deaf to the protests and frantic explanations of her victims. Tate is suddenly describing children, including “random kids from the neighborhood,” who are “half naked and covered in mud,” all fleeing in terror. The scene looks, he says, like war-torn Syria.
Mimicry. Stifling laughter, I listen carefully as Tate begins to mimic the nauseating voice of a pleading white parent: “Timmy, if you don’t clean your room, you won’t get sweets.” Why, Tate wants to know, would you try to negotiate a business deal with a four-year-old? You are, after all, the only reason the kid is alive, and the only thing keeping him alive. Business deals, Tate asserts, take place between adults.
Now I picture a checkout lane at Walmart. Inevitably, there is a Millenial parent offering a bribe, attempting to appease a brat in mid-tantrum. I’m in the grip of a natural: Good storytellers offer up images we easily identify as a result of common experience or what we have heard others say or do. Those images engage us, bring an emotion to the surface, and then activate the related scenes in our brains.
A neighborhood bar called The Comment Section. I check the comment section under the video. Eight hundred people have responded. Although I eventually find an anti-spanking crusader chastising Tate for promoting violence to children, overwhelmingly, the comments are from sane individuals partaking in the virtual camaraderie that can make the Internet fun.
Those writing the comments remind me of times when I sat at a long table at a student bar, the sort where pitchers of beer or sangria are passed around quickly while three conversations run simultaneously. I can imagine Tate telling the story there, his words intermingled with everyone’s laughter. I hear the voices from the comment section: “Same in South Africa.” “And Ireland, for sure.” “Hell, both my parents were like his aunt. Never injured me, of course. Made sure I didn’t make the same mistake twice.” “He got me with Syria. I mean Syria?”
And so on, until the laughter dies down a bit, but the convivial atmosphere remains, and folks begin discussing whether or not the soft touch of contemporary parenting is the source of a half dozen societal problems ranging from employees who think their supervisors owe them something to the general lack of respect for the police. It is the best way to begin thinking about a serious issue.
Tate the Great. The man is really something.
Cyclonejane
December 8, 2022
Conundrum Andrew Tate 