The Emergence of Incel Ideology into the Mainstream: Andrew Tate, The Rise and Fall of an Incel Icon

be “high-value men,” to Greta Thunberg’s clap-back tweet and hiss subsequent sex-traffic related arrest, his presence has undoubtedly taken the internet by storm. A former professional kickboxer turned social media personality, his misogynistic takes, revolutionized the way that men, especially young men, view women. His spotlight of stardom highlighted a subculture of incels and an onslaught emergence of male figures that promote and facilitate spaces which encourage this type of mindset. To understand, we have to start from the beginning. 10 movement. However, the name did not start with such pessimistic intentions. The name was originally coined by a woman named Alana, who in 1997 started an internet forum, the Involuntary Celibate Project or incel for short, for lonely virgins looking to find love. It was a place she had intended as a fun way for men and women to connect with others. Despite its humble beginnings, the name was adopted by misogynistic men who were angry and frustrated with women and sought solace in one another.

As a subculture, they orbit around concepts of misogyny and male chauvinism. Often, young men are swept up into this culture through a social media pipeline, traditionally starting with funny and simple reaction videos then transitioning into right-wing commentary and then into conspiracy theories, white nationalism, and anti-women ideologies. Despite the meaning of the name incel being involuntarily celibate, the community is not entirely made up of virgins, rather they collectively share a belief that feminism and modern women are to blame for the deterioration of western civilization and the traditional roles of men and women resulting in men being unable to find sexual partners.

Elliot Rodger, the mass shooter behind the 2014 Isla Vista shooting that occurred outside of a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is a primary example of an incel. In his autobiography Elliot Rodger Manifesto: My Twisted World

, he expresses his unsettling view of himself and others:

I saw them as the enemy. I felt condemned to live a life of lonely celibacy while other boys were allowed to experience the pleasures of sex, all because girls didn’t want me. I felt inferior and undesirable. This time, however, I couldn’t just stand by and accept such an injustice anymore. I refused to continue hiding away from the world and forgetting about all the insults it dealt to me” (56).

This idea that women gatekeep sex from men is shared among the incel community. Incels are prevalent in misogynist spaces and tend to be found in pockets of the internet where they can discuss their shared frustrations of women. Places like Reddit, Twitter, 4Chan, and YouTube are primary examples of places these forums tend to pop-up.

“One day I found some posts on the internet about teenagers having sex, and I was once again reminded of the life I had been denied. [...] I developed extreme feelings of envy, hatred, and anger towards anyone who has a sex life.

From the various forums of the internet where such ideas cultivate, the incel community, like any niche subgroup, has created terms and ideas to further convey concepts and cultivate comradery. Some of these terms include, alpha/sigma males, Chad, manosphere, high-value men, and red pilled. Compiled here is a list of some of the most popular terms and their meanings:

Alpha male: Originating in science and the animal kingdom, alpha males are primarily associated with wolf packs but have come to be applied to human men. They are seen as being dominant, assertive, intimidating, takecharge, and aggressive. In the incel space, being an alpha male is something coveted and sought after.

Sigma male: The phrase emerged from far-right activist Theodore Robert Beale who first used the term in a blog in 2010. It saw a surge of use on forums like 4chan and is used to describe a man who is like an Alpha, but is more introverted and reserved. He is seen as a lone wolf that people are drawn to by his strong presence. For the sigma male, he does not approach women, women approach him.

Chad: Based on the stereotypical name of a football quarterback jock who is popular and can have any girl that he wants, this is a name that incels use to refer to an untenable standard of an attractive and desirable man who is able to have sex with women.

Manosphere: The term refers to a wide array of communities and public forums on the internet that facilitate discussion on misogynistic discourse. This broad term refers to a wide scale of misogynistic groups from supremacist factions to incels to men’s rights.

High-value man: This is a man who is highly desirable to women. He is funny, smart, successful, talented, and alpha/sigma, basically he is the total package. Women want to date him and men want to be him.

Red pill / blue pill: Originating from a scene in The Matrix, taking the blue pill is to continue to live and understand the world as one already does whereas the red pill is to choose to know the truth about reality. Many in the incel community identify as being ‘red pilled’ meaning that they understand the dark reality of life and understand how women “really are.”

Now that we have a basic understanding of incel talking points, we can begin to navigate the community.

Stemming from the red pilled ideology, many men in the manosphere believe that as a result of the feminist movement, women now only want to date men ‘out of their league’ and are no longer choosing to date the “nice guy.” As a result of this, they have come out with unsupported statistics of the 80/20 rule where 80% of the most desirable women go after the top 20% of high-value men and that the remaining 80% of men are left to fight over the remaining 20% of undesirable women.

Prior to his rise to fame as a social media influencer, he was a four-time world champion professional kickboxer, winning his first championship in 2011. During his kickboxing career, he went by the name Cobra Tate, named after his lowered-arm stance. He garnered more popularity when he starred on Big Brother, a popular UK reality TV show. He was pulled from the show in 2016 when a video of what appeared to be Andrew Tate beating a woman with a belt leaked to the public. He asserted that the video was taken out of context and that they were just playing around.

The red pill community is rampant with toxic masculinity, rape culture, and men’s right activism. The subreddit, r/TheRedPill featured users discussing the “first rule of dealing with rape accusations and the Police, keep your mouth shut.” The r/TheRedPill subreddit was quarantined from the platform in 2018 and appears to have been scrubbed from the site.

Now that we have a solid understanding of the culture that was bubbling under the surface, we can better understand just how Andrew Tate was able to captivate audiences and propel the manosphere into the spotlight.

Andrew Tate’s Origins and Rise to Fame

Andrew Tate is the son of Emory Tate, a famous African-American chess International Master.

He resurfaced to fame in 2022 when he launched a viral social media campaign to promote his male focused ‘self help’ company Hustler’s University. He showed off his expensive cars, $30 million dollar Romanian home, and other luxuries as a means of promoting Hustler's University and shared controversial takes on women and masculinity on TikTok. His viral internet fame primarily stemmed from his clips talking about women, which garnered both admiration and hate. He is heavily associated with toxic masculinity and is considered to be red pilled. These associations have led him to be heavily tied to the manosphere and the incel community despite him never directly associating with either.

Hustler’s University is a $50 a month subscription which gives a person access to a Discord server with a plethora of channels to learn and discuss subjects that educate users on how to themselves become successful multimillionaires like Andrew Tate.

Being a big fan of referencing The Matrix, the service has garnered a lot of criticism, with many people calling it a pyramid scheme. The accusation comes from the affiliate program that is encouraged on the platform and has been suggested to be one of the primary sources of revenue for students. The Hustler’s University 2.0 site promotes its affiliate program but does not mention exactly how much revenue can be earned from each signup that is received from one's own link. It has been reported that sales commission is around 50% of anyone who uses the link’s first month subscription, which would be $25 of the $50 subscription fee. At the end of the day, the real person making the most money from these commissions is Andrew Tate as he gets 100% of subscription costs after the first month.

From asserting that sparkling (bubbly) water is the only acceptable water to saying women can’t drive to saying that rape victims are partly to blame for being assaulted, he had shared a wide array of highly controversial ideas. Despite being 36 years old, he asserted that he refuses to date a woman who is over the age of 25, solely for the reason that the younger the girl is, the less sex and experience she will have had, making it a better dating experience for him. He has also shares that one of his preference for choosing to live in Romania was based on fact that it has much stricter thresholds for proving rape, which he learned after being charged for sexual assault while living in London. He complains that the West is far too quick to side with women.

In October 2022 Andrew Tate released a much less well known site called The Real World, which is basically a carbon copy of Hustler’s University 2.0 but with a different name and an initial cost of $147 for the first month and the $50 for every month after that.

Beyond just Hustler’s University, he has many controversial takes that have riled up people on the internet.

Not only has he made such atrocious comments about women, he has also promoted his ability to monopolize off of women for monetary gain. He has talked about, both on the internet and on his Hustler’s University site, his webcam business. On Fresh and Fit, a “manosphere” podcast known for its misogynistic takes on women, Andrew Tate shared how he started his webcam business small with only two women, whom he identified as his girlfriends, and grew to a large operation with four locations and revenue of $600,000 a month.

Andrew Tate has expressed that all of the women who worked in his webcam business were his girlfriends, asserting that his girlfriends would do more for him than most men's wives would.

Many have associated Andrew Tate’s tactics of luring women into the webcam business as a well established method known as the loverboy method. The method is characterized by a man making a woman believe that they are in a relationship and then transitioning to using them for their money or as a way of earning money. He shared that he would lure women to come live with him in Romania, take them on dates, and in one instance promise marriage, only to then have them perform sexual acts on camera for which Tate would receive more of the revenue. These actions are a primary example of sex-trafficking, which is what, as of December 29, 2022, Andrew Tate has been imprisoned.

Prior to his arrest, Andrew Tate, who has been banned from basically every platform on the internet, provoked climate activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter by listing all his gas emitting vehicles and asked her to provide her email so that he could send her a more in-depth list. Greta clapped back, stating that he could email her at “smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”

Tate responded to this with a video responding to Greta. At the time Tate was hiding from Romanian authorities. Fans were quick to point out a pizza box in the background of his video from a pizza chain located in Romania.

At the time of his arrest, tweets on his account started popping up about The Matrix, one of which said, “The Matrix has attacked me./ But they misunderstand, you cannot kill an idea./ Hard to kill .” Andrew Tate’s entire time as a social media influencer, prior to being banned on nearly all platforms, was riddled with references to The Matrix from red pilling to the belief that he had broken out of The Matrix and was no longer confined by it. There is a bit of irony in The Matrix being co-opted by the male chauvinist and incel community, the movie was actually written and directed by Lana and Lily Wachowski, two trans women.

There is a growing concern about how men like Andrew Tate are impacting young boys between the ages 14-19. Teachers across the country have been reporting that many boys in their classes have begun regurgitating many of the concepts and talking points that Andrew Tate has said regarding the inferiority of women. Platforms like TikTok, which have algorithms for personalized content, make it very easy for toxic subcultures, like the incel community, to create echochambers where the same ideas and beliefs are reiterated and appear to be the only ideas that these young boys are being introduced to. The more these young boys watch and like content about misogyny, the more of that same content they will receive.

This creates a steep pipeline for boys to be sucked into overtly misogynistic ideologies without any real opportunity to hear counterpoints or the dangers of such beliefs.

While Andrew Tate’s arrest put a swift halt to Andrew Tate producing more content, and based on his charges it is unlikely he will be making a comeback anytime soon, there is much debate over whether such a phenomena is bound to happen again. There are still plenty of spaces on the internet that continue to facilitate the manosphere but the subculture is no longer in the spotlight. The world lies in wait, wondering if another Andrew Tate or perhaps some new ideology will create a paradigm shift, forever altering the hearts and minds of the youth. ***

Editor’s Note: Andrew Tate was released from Romanian jail on April 3rd, 2023, after this article was submitted for publication, and he is currently on house arrest..