Whether you’ve been tapping through TikToks, scrolling through Twitter, or browsing on Instagram, if you’ve been active on any social media platforms within the last couple of months, you’ve likely encountered the deeply controversial Canadian-American influencer, Andrew Tate. Pure name recognition would label Tate one of the most well-known figures on the internet right now; however, according to most, his sudden rise to fame can be more accurately represented as notoriety.

Tate’s rise to fame can be described as completely and utterly uncommon. He was born in Washington D.C. but spent most of his childhood in Sussex, England, a trait that is responsible for his undeniably distinguishable English-American accent. His father, Emory Tate, was a famous African-American international Chessmaster, and his passing in 2015 left Tate with an enormous set of shoes to fill.

Although Tate is now typically recognized for his presence on social media sites, he wasn’t actually present on most platforms until 2017. Before that transformational year, his career ambitions lay mostly in the world of kickboxing. In 2009, he competed publicly for the first time in the International Sport Karate Association (ISKA) Full Contact Cruiserweight championship. Despite his lack of professional experience, Tate won 17 out of the 19 rounds, instantly granting him impressive rookie status. He continued to kickbox and win titles for the next four years; however, in 2013 he decided that kickboxing was potentially too dangerous for a man of his stature, so he opted out of all combat-related activity and retired from kickboxing.

Surprisingly, his next venture proved to be the exact opposite of his stint in kickboxing–he starred in the popular American reality tv show, Big Brother. A self-proclaimed “ladies’ man,” Tate was deeply confident in his pre-season interviews, and for the first six days of production, Tate appeared a lovable and charismatic figure on the show. Then, a video was leaked on the internet. A video shows Tate engaging in domestic abuse with an unknown woman. He was immediately dropped from the show, and his descent into a criticized misogynist began.

Following his stint on Big Brother, he periodically received attention on Twitter for making shockingly disrespectful comments about women. He claimed that women are partially responsible for sexual abuse cases and that women are technically the “property of men” (Twitter). In addition, he publicly discredited mental health advocacy, claiming that depression “isn’t real” (Twitter). These voracious comments have branded Tate as a misogynist. Eloise Franklyn (12) remarks that she, alongside many young women, finds Tate’s comments “disgusting, abhorrent, and honestly unbelievable.”

Despite his unbelievable claims over the years, he was only just vaulted into internet sensation status during the summer of 2022 when he started his own faux-university, Hustler’s University, an online platform where ambitious young men “have access to Stock Analysis, Options Plays, Cryptanalysis, Defi, NFTs, E-commerce, Copywriting, Freelancing, and more” (hustlers-university-2-0.com).

In promoting this widely branded pyramid scheme, Tate appeared on several podcasts and interviews, where he once again began to spew his radical ideas regarding women, COVID-19, and mental health. On the BFFS Podcast with Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards, Tate went as far as to claim that women are the “property of men” and that their “main purpose is to serve the needs of their man” (BFFS). Furthermore, this attitude was reflected in all of his social media content, inspiring his millions of male followers to adhere to his words.

This combination of inappropriate actions, comments and led to a ban from Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter in early September. All social media platforms claimed that his words could incite violence, and his accounts were suspended permanently from all sites. Despite his widespread hatred, there was a mixed reaction to his suspension.