The hit Netflix series ‘Adolescence’, shone a timely light on toxic online influencers like Andrew Tate and sparked fierce political debate - not least when Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch admitted in April that she hadn’t seen the most talked about TV show of the year.
Few know the misogynistic domain of the ‘manosphere’ better than journalist James Bloodworth, who first encountered slick ‘pick up artists’, as a young man desperate for a girlfriend at the turn of the millennium.
He quickly disengaged and went off to university, but as he recounts in his book ‘Lost Boys, by the time he returned to investigate the la(n)dscape professionally a couple of decades later, influencers like Andrew Tate had become pre-eminent online.
The change was driven and reinforced by social media algorithms which keep serving viewers more of what they like, even if, as in the case of Tate and his brother Tristan, what they enjoy is demeaning to women.
Bloodworth says that right wing political figures such as Jordan Peterson provide a ready conduit.
“When I was researching ‘Lost Boys’, within a few days of me starting to watch Jordan Peterson videos my whole YouTube timeline was colonised by that type of content. Some of it was boilerplate self improvement stuff, and then some of it was a bit more political, like ‘feminism and the left are part of the problem’.
“And then if you keep watching that, you get Andrew Tate or some of these other kind of ‘red pill’ characters.
“There was a study done in Australia last year which found that a boy watching Jordan Peterson on Instagram would be shown an Andrew Tate video within an hour. And if they watched that, they would be shown almost exclusively Andrew Tate videos.
“The tech companies want to keep you online. That's how they make the money. That's how they sell their advertising. And if [the algorithm] thinks you're interested in men's rights it will start delivering up stuff that tends to make you angry, because that keeps you online.
“Seething rage bait is a good way to keep you engaged on these platforms.”
Both Tate brothers are now subject to charges of rape and human trafficking - which they deny - but Andrew is a self-confessed misogynist, having described women as “intrinsically lazy". There is, he says, "no such thing as an independent female".
Despite (or perhaps because of) this, he has been lionised by figures on the political right, including Reform leader Nigel Farage, who said only last year that Tate “is an important voice for men.”
Bloodworth says the Tate brothers are (of course) entitled to a fair trial, but finds it difficult to understand how readily they have been accepted by right-leaning influencers he’s met in the United States, who sell programmes designed to help young men become ‘alpha males.’
“Even just going by the things they've said publicly, these are people I would not ever want to associate myself with, but they were venerated by the guys I met in this world a lot of whom just seemed like regular guys.
“There's such a huge blind spot. If you can be cool with someone who says those things about women, I just think that's a damning indictment of that right wing ecosystem. Just because they're wealthy, or just because they have a huge following, or just because they're a high profile figure, people invite them into Twitter Spaces and things like that.
“They're accused of horrendous things, and they've said horrendous things. It just goes to show that we can't be in any way complacent when it comes to defending advances in feminism - and progressive advances more generally.”
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