Dealing with brick-people in the age of Andrew Tate

BLAIR ANDERSON English senior beanders@my.loyno.edu

We shouldn’t have asked that. He brandished a drunken smile, vacuumed in the surrounding air, and began another round of rants.

Andrew Tate is a British-American influencer made famous not for his fourtime boxing world championships, but for his podcasts, interviews, and, more recently, human trafficking accusations. Much more recently, he was detained in Romania after leaking his location in a tweet in an attempt to antagonize a 19-year old activist. My friend followed him, as well as similar influencers, religiously. His rants danced from topic to topic with no clear direction. First, he complained that modern men are too soft. They don’t have the strength and composure that idols of masculinity like Andrew Tate have. Both he and Andrew Tate hate watching men cry. Emotions interfere with productivity, so they believe men would be better off without them. Second, he boldly suggested that more people be traumatized. Trauma builds character, after all. To prove his point, he cited the success of Oprah Winfrey, a woman who was regularly physically abused by her parents and grandparents. This claim was a lot harder for me to digest. In fact, his lack of empathy made me want to throw up. I mentioned all the people with lives ruined by their trauma. I explained how they were torn apart both mentally and physically by their experiences. To finish our night, we had a long chat about the connective tissue between