How to get rich off young men’s shame

The rise and rise of Andrew Tate

Andrew Tate is in the news. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s an “influencer” of mostly young men through YouTube and TikTok. At one point last year, he was Googled more than Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump combined. He’s known for pedaling a cartoonish vision of masculinity - he’s never too far away from cigars, silk robes, or private jets in his videos. He was recently charged with human trafficking, rape and organized crime in Romania where he lives and runs a cam girl business. Investigative pieces by Vice, New York Magazine, and YouTuber Coffeezilla make it clear that his demeanor is as misogynist and juvenile as grown men get in this century. Despite this, his online “university”, Hustler’s University, appears to have 150 to 220 thousand subscribers at any given point. I can’t think of another paid platform for young men that comes close to those numbers.  And assuming all those subscribers are paying the $49 / month subscription fee, that’s $7 to $11 million a month for Tate & Co. 

So why is he so popular? My take is that Andrew Tate directly addresses shame in young men - one of the greatest unmet needs for young men right now - and there is not a single voice among online personalities who is providing a healthier alternative. 

We will never tire of the rise and grind

While Tate’s misogyny draws the lion’s share of press, a lot of what Andrew talks about is achieving your dreams and not becoming a loser. Here’s his video which distills his message. It describes working 9 to 5 just so you can get drunk and watch a movie on the weekends as normal and boring. It talks about having discipline and doing things you don’t want to do most days of the week. His messaging combines Benjamin Franklin achieve-your-dreams positivity with shitting on the vast majority of people because they are “normal.” The combo strikes me as uniquely appealing to American high schoolers. I mean as a 35 year old dude I’m still into not being boring and I do enjoy the occasional shitpost, but 17 year old me was really into those things.

And it comes at a time when dudes are “getting soft”. We’re way more comfortable talking about our emotions than 50 years ago. It’s rare for young men to have living relatives who have fought in war. Sensitivities around how we treat others are at an all time high. In my humble opinion, these are all good things. 

But men have internalized a whole lot of bullshit with the softness - specifically shame. Shame has become a bigger part of young men’s identities for a lot of commonly highlighted reasons. The New York Magazine article on Tate describes how language in school around gender and sex can feel very policed, leading straight boys to withdraw and feel shame around their identity. I think we’re all familiar with how integral shaming has become to social media, where it’s a bit of an art form. Shame used to be the domain of parents, teachers, religious leaders, and the occasional journalist. Now dunking on someone online is a part of many people’s morning routines. 

And a lot of the shame is not just a fluke of social media. Many discussions around gender, sex, and race achieve their goal when they get men to think “I’m wrong.”  There’s something that feels very Catholic about the experience of being a straight white dude engaging in discussions around identity. The reward of engaging can shift from learning how I’m wrong, to learning what not to say, to learning how to apologize. As someone who grew up Catholic, learning about my sins is second nature. But the hamster wheel of humility not only gets old, it’s paralyzing. 

When I feel shame about myself, I don’t change. I don’t go out of my way to help people. I think about myself in endless loops, generally being of little use to myself or anybody else. I remember being scolded as a kid for lying to my parents and my response was to methodically tap my head against my bedroom wall (I started out banging as opposed to tapping but that hurt too much). I feel like a lot of shame responses are similar: not helpful and kind of annoying for everyone else to witness. It’s a bit ironic that shame is the go-to tactic for when we want someone else to change, because I just don’t think it works. At best, shame can point me in the right direction, but actually getting me to take a step forward requires something more energizing - like anger, fear, or hope. 

Jordan Peterson’s advice on this front is “if you haven’t done anything wrong, do not apologize.” It’s solid dad advice. Most of the times I feel shame it’s unwarranted. Then there’s the structural critique, which I think the show Ziwe on Showtime best illustrates. Ziwe asks all her white guests if they’d like to apologize for anything they’ve done to marginalized communities. Here’s Ilana Glazer apologizing for using the phrase “Yas Queen.” Here’s Ziwe asking Chet Hanks (Tom Hanks’ son) to apologize for using a Jamaican accent. Here’s Alison Roman talking about how she’s already apologized to Asian women and so Ziwe asks her how many women of color helped her apologize. It’s the kind of schtick where the first time I saw it, I thought her main gag was trolling white people. The fifth time I saw it, it was clear she was trolling the whole apology industrial complex. 

Andrew Tate’s contribution to the discourse

I think this gets at the big question underlying his rise: “Why is Andrew Tate’s brand of misogyny so appealing to the most culturally sensitive generation in the history of America?” After Tate’s arrest in December 2022, his social media following and Hustler’s University subscription base has gone up. What’s going on?

A lot of men feel like they’re being interviewed by Ziwe all the time. More broadly, they feel like losers. I wish I could pull out a well respected survey on the matter proving that, but this take comes from talking to a lot of dudes about our personal relationships with shame. Men are absorbing a lot of the anger out there and they feel like shit despite knowing they’re not personally responsible for that anger. It feels threatening nonetheless.

There’s ways to deal with this. Men’s work contribution to this field, in my opinion, is what’s called “the psychological shield.”¹ The psychological shield is learning how to take in the criticisms that resonate, while rejecting those that do not. During sessions where two men are hashing out their grievances, a facilitator might explicitly ask the man receiving judgment to put up his psychological shield, and some men might make a physical movement indicating that their shield is up. Sounds kind of corny, but it helps me actually make use of the criticisms that I find useful, without getting mired in the parts I disagree with. If I’m the one with heat for someone else, it reminds me that my judgments and triggers come from my own insecurities, and are not based on anything inherent about the other person.

And then there’s Andrew Tate’s way of dealing with this. Andrew Tate’s contribution is laying the shame on thick by calling everyone a loser and then turning that shame into fear. And it works because young folks are nothing if not self aware, and they know they’re not doing great. They know that watching 3 hours of TV or YouTube per day on average isn’t healthy. They know they’re more depressed and anxious than ever. And so they search YouTube for videos on self-improvement. And then Andrew Tate pops up and tells them they’re gonna be a loser if they keep watching YouTube videos and instead they should workout and make a shit ton of money. The antidote to shame is attack mode, and those attacks fall on two targets: women and being “normal”. 

I do sympathize with dudes feeling like losers and looking for answers. The whole reason I got into men’s work in the first place was because I was complaining about how, at 31 years old, I felt emotionally stunted and wasn’t making enough money to afford therapy. I saw my friends who could afford therapy looked more in control of themselves than me. They were more present, they could talk about their emotions in a deep way, and they came alive during emotionally difficult conversations, while I shut down. I felt like a loser. The man who was listening to me gripe about all this, Gethin Aldous, told me about men’s work, and it turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. Had I been 17, and had Gethin been a YouTube algorithm recommending Andrew Tate instead of men’s work, life could have been different. 

Andrew Tate vs. Jordan Peterson 

The first popular YouTube dude that directly told young men that they feel like losers because they’re making poor decisions was Jordan Peterson. And for a year or two, any dude who spent a decent amount of time on YouTube got fed Jordan Peterson videos. But while Peterson’s message hit home for a lot of men, his delivery mechanism is just not suited for young folks. His most famous book is 368 pages with a whole chapter explaining how I can be a better man by behaving like a lobster. It requires a deep patience for intellectual pontificating. Even his more clickbaity stuff, such as YouTube videos of him getting into arguments with liberals about pronouns, feel very academic in tone. 

Then Andrew Tate comes along who also explains how I can be a better man, but instead of behaving like a lobster I should join “Hustler’s University” and become a millionaire. He markets himself through videos of him kickboxing and slow walking away from his private jet whilst smoking a cigar. The algorithm didn’t stand a chance. Any young dude interested in dealing with shame, which is every young dude in America, was gonna get fed Andrew Tate. Young men may have initially come to Tate to watch him say something outrageous, but I think the promise of solving for shame is what’s converting clicks into purchases. Especially when the only other alternative easily found via social media is a 368 page book.

And you know the marketing is strong when a product like Hustler’s University achieves as much success as it does while being zero help to to its customers. YouTube journalist Coffeezilla went deep on it, and short of it is that it’s a grift and not well run one at that. Customers are promised they’ll become millionaires in the hustler area of their choosing: running an Amazon drop shipping company, copywriting, e-commerce, cryptocurrency etc. Each area is run by a “professor” who, according to Coffeezilla, are frauds. For example the cryptocurrency “expert” shilled a bunch of poorly performing crypto coins on Twitter before deleting his tweets. This is on top of the fact that domain areas like cryptocurrency and Amazon drop shipping are just plain difficult areas to make money in. Tate himself does not participate in Hustler’s University except to tell customers: “You are also the only person who can fuck this up.” 

A final question

I very badly want to know what a healthy version of Andrew Tate looks like. I mean that conceptually, but also just straight visually. A lot of Andrew Tate’s appeal comes from visually communicating aspirations straight men care about like money, women, and physique. Since 1962, James Bond has given us the blueprint for what that looks like. Andrew Tate borrows heavy from the slutty James Bond vision board. Despite changing attitudes towards what masculinity should entail, us straight men haven’t really updated our masculinity vision board to reflect that. I love James Bond, but we need new icons to promote new aspirations. What does this look like?

1. Men’s work often takes existing therapeutic exercises and codifies them to make them easy to implement. I’d bet psychological shield is one of these instances.